Dang bro, nice list. Some of those may make it, but they may not be selected as a "race". I want the idea of a Homunculus to be a boss! here is a list of the Homunculus should be in it, seven deadly sins

Pride - The Strongest, the Ultimate Boss.
Gluttony - The Fattest, slow but strong.
Wrath -  Fast, not strong, but hard to hit.
Envy - Angry, will attack anything in a diameter of 15 blocks away on level ground. and 10 blocks away on unlevel ground.
Sloth - Slowest, but can be very hard to destroy.
Greed - Sneaky, not willing to attack, more willing to steal your items.
Lust - [?]

Actually i was trying to stay away from the Full Metal Alchemist type. I know they are cool and all, but the *original* Homonculi were living constructs, but could not pass as a human on their own. I thought they fit the "steampunk" monster style very well.

So as far as i know, there will be animals, aggressive animals, and variants of both. However, being the hardcore D&D and RPG player i am, i much more prefer a grand variety of beasts to slay, and i think that games nowadays have lacked such content. With that in mind, i have been looking at monsters that aren't specific to one game, but reoccur in myth or have been used so many times you wouldn't get sued! The main sources i used for this are Master of Magic and D&D, of course, sheerly because they have many monsters that meet my previous criteria. look em up if you never heard of them. So, the list goes:

• Sprites
• Elementals
• Angels
• Bat (Flaming bats, Doom bats, etc.)
• Barghest
• Basilisk
• Behemoth
• Beholder
• Belker
• Brownie
• Bugbear
• Chimera
• Cockatrice
• Colossi
• Couatl
• Death Knight
• Daemon/Devil
• Doppelganger
• Dragon Turtle
• Ettin
• Frost Worm
• Gargoyle
• Ghoul
• Genie
• Gnolls
• Gorgons
• Griffon
• Hellhound
• Hippogriff
• Homonculus
• Ifrit
• Kobold
• Lich
• Lycanthrope
• Manticore
• Mephit
• Naga
• Roc
• Shadow Mastiff
• Spider (All kinds)
• Spirits/Ghosts/Spectres
• Stalkers (Invisible Warriors)
• Troglodytes
• Unicorn
• Wight
• Will-o'-wisp
• Worg
• Wraith

If any of these make it to Mythruna, it would be pretty sweet.

Yep.  I have all kinds of options.

A few things I can say for sure:
-it is neutral.  There is no spirit world concept of a "good spirit world" and a "bad spirit world".  Like the mundane plane... it just "is".
-the energy transfer of spirit crystals is broadcast through the spirit plane

Things that may be true:
-the regular world can somehow be seen from the spirit plane and visited in non-corporeal form
-the simplest non-line-of-sight teleporters are spirit-crystal based and may be possibly used to allow entrance into the spirit world as a non-corporeal spirit entity... sort of the reverse of the spirit plane visits into the mundane world.

I have tons of RPG spirit planes that I will draw ideas from.  I prefer to keep some of it a surprise.

So you are keeping the idea of using gems and crystals alot throughout the game?

heaven n hell are overused i think. if a 'spirit' world is the direction you want to go, then... i honestly have no suggestion. a spirit world is actually very vague and manipulable. especially in a game like this

I thought I'd ask since I'd LOVE another dimension in this game (if possible). I don't mean like minecraft's netherhell or whatever, i mean just a literal other dimension, with certain things different. The best way to describe what i mean would be to take a RPG view on the 2 dimensions in Master of Magic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Magic)

         


Basically a darker version of the main world. It would add a visual contrast and would add ever more depth to Mythruna!
My original idea to put forth was that, if the physics engine works, then you could do a certain steam powered machine that, if done right and hooked up to the right materials, could make a portal. Talk about magical steampunk.

Heheh... if I do my job right, maybe the "blocks like Minecraft" thing won't even be noticed until the second viewing of the trailer.

Well even if they did notice it eventually, the judgement would be skewed in a good way since there are things like cylinders and 12 different "half" blocks, among other variations that make minecraft just plain inferior, even if this was just a building game.

I think most of the features are covered in the "what's alpha?" thread: http://mythruna.com/forum/index.php?topic=862.0

But I need populated towns, character animation, some level of fighting, trees/buildings to be able to burn down + fall over, and the ability to have mountains explode in a shower of chunks.  Sort of at a minimum.

Oh, and horses.  The beginning of the trailer has a guy racing across various landscapes on horseback.

And thats why i like you paul. To most developers that would be a "maximum" 

Well as soon as my little pay pall issue fixes itself you have my 25, and how about this, the next good update ill throw in another 25, for every update after I can promise 5 or more. Now I cant say it can stay this way because pay pal hates mw, but I can promise you at least my 25 now, and 25 after, unless life hits me with a bus lol

lol i sense a reference there...

I think my end vision is pretty stable.  There are only a few cutting edge areas that may turn out to be impossible but there are fallback positions in all cases.  Full physics is one of those things... though I have a much better understanding of the risks now than when I started.  It used to be "is proper physics going to even be possible?"  And now it's more "how much will I have to dumb it down not to randomly explode?"

A lot of proper physics is just a short cut to avoid a longer + harder path, though.

The final game can only get better with your experiences. If things are taking too long though i may need to shell out more money so my- i mean, your dream game can be finished  if i could give you my excitement for your game, i would.

I don't.  It would have to be a nearly free (for me) effort so that there is no/little risk.  One of the missing pieces was joystick support so I checked that against my priorities and discovered it would be useful for other things so I added it to my short term list.  Other things that potentially move up on the list of priorities that more directly affect Mythruna are character animation and local-only physics effects (particles effects and stuff).  The latter of which naturally leads to be closer to having networked physics also ready to go.  (Physics will probably go through about five phases before it's "done".)  And, by the way, local-only physics is useful for proper character animation.

Anyway, it's mostly a way to focus on shorter term goals because town generation + AI, done properly is long and arduous.  If my life situation were to change tomorrow, I like to know that I have some quick options for potentially quickly jump-starting full time game development... or at least knowing where those lines are.

I guess you do what you have to do to keep the ball rolling, Paul. I've played video games all my life, but i just can't see myself getting a job just on a degree and my love of video games. I'm paying attention to how you're going about this because i can easily see myself being in your shoes later, though my "plan" for now is to become an optometrist first, get some money than start doing games like this in my free time, so I want to see how you're doing it.
If you ever need any help let me know, and keep up the good balance between fun and finances 

Yeah, it's done well at selling itself so far.  I'd like to see how fast that grows when I actually start advertising.  It's all been word of mouth so far... but I will start pushing it for real at or near alpha.  I've story-boarded most of a game trailer... I just need to implement the things for the trailer so I can record it.

I'm interested in seeing what you have up your sleeve for a trailer. actually, I'm interested in whats being added to the game that will be in the trailer 

I don't know.  Organic growth is one of those fuzzy things.  You spend a lot of time in an area where you try to figure out if continuing is still worth it.  The easier that question is to answer as "keep going" the better life is... whether because finding free time to work is not hard or whether the game is earning enough money+respect+whatever to keep it alive.  It's a balance.  The corollary is that if life makes it too hard to work on the game and there are no tangible benefits to continuing then this starts to weight against the "life long dream" thing and you make hard decisions.

I may be biased, but i think you should "keep going"  and for being pre-alpha with little-to-no advertisement, this game already has some buzz. Once the game has actual shape to it, people will most likely start trying it, saying how awesome it is and telling their friends. The ideas have the potential and a veteran like yourself would be one of the few who could pull it off. A good game could almost sell itself. (almost)

Like having a lifelong dream crushed under boot heels.

Still, there is lots of middle ground between self-sustaining game company and "failure".

I can't help but ironically smile had your first statement with a smile icon... So where in that middle ground would be your second choice?

I feel like i would donate up to 50$ if i knew more of the direction you were going and knew it would be stable... But what guarentee do you have that a side game would get enough attention to be worth it? you would be in a smaller mythruna boat.

Well in that case i hope it works out so you can do less work for more profit. I imagine you would die a little bit inside if you did so much work for it to just not work out in the end.

Im not sure if you would answer this, but what are all the expenses you have for making mythruna?

A 3D physics engine is one of the hardest things I've ever done in my entire programming career... and it's not even done yet.

If I can get it working right then it will be cool, though.

I hope it works out cuz otherwise i feel like Mythruna won't happen