Thanks Zinth. Interestingly, that is how collage construction was invented. My first UE4 project was a open-world survival game featuring Frankenstein Monsters (Flesh Golems) instead of Zombies. These monsters were assembled from dismembered remains of human, animals, other monster. I aborted the project early, realizing the massive competition in the genre and it did not align with arcadekomodo.com’s cash-driven skill tournament model. I migrated my work into Dragon’s Gold, retaining the core element of survival games: Auto-depleting Health Stat mechanic/Replenished by Eating Food. Dragon’s Gold is my re-imagining of a Next-Gen First Person Gauntlet.
That’s a lot of features, which equates to of scripting/programming, even if you integrate pre-made systems from the Marketplace. I predict you will need a hand or two in this department. As a RPG, our games may have common areas in which we may be able assist each other. For starters, I’ve written a Depth-First Search Labyrinth Generator for Dragons Gold, and just recently published a BSP-based Random Room Generator that could be flushed out into a full Random Dungeon Generator. Ill have to research –> based on Key-Words ala .Hack style. (loved the old PlayStation games of that anime).
In regards to Quest, the needs to survive (ie: auto-depleting health) are self-motivated quest, requiring survivors to seek shelter and supplies (ie: health replenishing food [the reward]) to avoid permanent death/sever penalty. These supplies are typically spawned in away from player in distant locations, requiring the player to travel into greater threats (loosing greater amounts of health faster). This can also be used to drive exploration of the game world.
RPG Quest have similar requirements. Players typically have to travel to complete some objective, to receive an reward. RPG Quest add of Narrative to these objectives. However, without a significant penalty for NOT completing the objective, the survival element could be lost. The typical grind to level up in a RPG is a self-motivated quest, but, its not needed to survive. But, what if it was, then Leveling up to survive would not necessarily be considered grinding.
My interpretation of your Skill Exp System is similar to the depleting health stat. When depleted by damage, the player will have to seek means to replenish, which would be self-generated quest. This is very interesting, perhaps certain spells have latent effect the auto-depleting Skill Exp for specific amounts of time. However, this mechanic may not drive survival, if Skill Exp do not directly impact health stats. In my opinion, to capture the true essence of a survival genre the threat of permadeth must always be eminent.
Narrative is a hallmark of RPGs, but requires more work in writing lore, dialogue, etc. Narrative for Quest would counter a Minimalist Story. Farming, Animal husbandry, House building, and Crafting are repeatable mechanics that can compensate for Narrative. I would urge towards adding even greater amounts of repeatable game mechanics upto 100 to give the mission to survive greater variance and surprise.
Bigger isn’t always better especially when you don’t have the content creators on the team yet. I can easily see this becoming the game that could take the rest of your life to make. LOL. I would recommend designing the game with intent to scale up in content, features, multiplayer support. I approach this with a Modular Design from modular code to modular assets. Anyway, I think this is enough to read for now.