Crown of Ethalion

As I set out on this project, I really wanted to create an immersive role-playing world.

World Name: Crown of Ethalion

World Link: https://horizon.meta.com/world/784964318041017

Genre: Other (RPG)

Inspiration

I was inspired by recent action RPGs like Path of Exile, classics like Baldur's Gate and immersive worlds like Skyrim, all the time thinking about creating a big party experience with friends. The anime Sword Art Online was also an influence in the design.

What it does

This is a world built for deep roleplaying immersion. Getting together with your friends and grinding the levels out while you advance along the epic storyline in a world you wish you could call home. Getting into a party will almost be required for boss fights.

I didn't get as far as we would have liked with this experience, but I built several things I believe are innovative for Horizon Worlds.

What I did build was the start of the game. The introduction to the world, the story, the characters, and some of the gameplay. This required building out systems and UI that could scale to many players, and a small (but good) area where all of this takes place.

I have all the key systems in place for this start like UI, character dialog, and scalable inventory. More importantly, I believe this is truly immersive.

Ultimately, I see this as the beginnings of an epic narrative that will keep players engaged for days and days

How we built it

I built this using Horizon's editor tools, Meta GenAI, other GenAI, and VSCode with typescript. It was a lot of hard work.

Challenges we ran into

The challenges were plentiful.

For the content, AI tends to give imperfect assets. Finding ways to mask this or make the imperfection not stand out was a challenge.

On the UI side almost everything is original and required a lot of experimentation. Making everything performant required complex synchronization between the local and server states. Inventory in particular was quite complicated to ensure the players and server stay in sync when acquiring or even equipping items.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am particularly proud of the UI, where I spent most of my time:

A device-scalable UI that looks good on mobile phones, tablets and web
Smooth UX interactions, beautiful UI artwork
Character dialog with player choices
Drag-and-drop inventory (this was particularly tricky to implement, but crucial for user immersion)

My goal was to create a UI that felt like it belonged in a role-playing-game, and I think I accomplished that.

Other than that, the system makes extensive use of local scripts and is scalable. I'm proud of that because I think large parties and groups will make raids and monster hunting more fun.

I'm also proud of the art and setting, which was nearly 100% AI-created.

What we learned

I started two thirds of the way through the competition when I first learned about it. I had no experience with Meta Horizon Worlds, and the learning curve was steep.

So yes, I learned a lot about Horizon Worlds and the intricacies of its technical systems, but I also learned a lot about the capabilities of GenAI. I was shocked to discover that Meta AI could produce usable game assets in many cases. In particular, our skybox was generated by Meta AI and is absolutely phenomenal.

What's next for Crown of Ethalion

I'd like to see Crown of Ethalion turn into a full-fledged experience that people gather with their friends to enjoy. There is a beginning of an enticing storyline and the complex inventory and UI systems are in-place.

To go further means developing quests, combat, and (ultimately) content.

I plan to keep developing it after the competition and get it to that point.