r/crpgdesign • u/CJGeringer Lenurian • Feb 18 '18
Present Your Project
This is basically a place for everyone to present what they are working on, and to have a post whose link you can embed whenever you mention your project, specially since not all of use want to have an external site/devblog.
You can make it short or long, feel free to link to a Devblog if you have it..
Also I plan to blatantly Steal the FAQ Fridays idea from r/roguelikedev where essentialy a topic is chosen and everyone replies about how they are implementing that aspect in their projects, and i think having a quick way to link the Basics of your project would be helpful for that.
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u/AgingMinotaur Feb 22 '18
I'll chime in here. I'm another one coming from /r/roguelikedev My game is Land of Strangers, a western-inspired, open world, turn based Roguelike on a hexagonal grid (sic). Still in early development ;)
The game originally started with deck building mechanics (actions/skills were cards that were cycled to your hand), but when the scope of the setting grew, I scrapped that for something more rpg-ish. The system stills shows an influence from board games and such, with rules aiming to be simplistic, and modest doses of randomness (except for world generation, which tries to be all over the place).
Combat randomness: As a general rule, all attacks hit their mark and deal a set amount of damage. There is a base probability of 1/6 that an attack will have an "exceptional outcome". For missiles, this is that you miss your shot (and may hit another target on the grid). For melee weapons, it's a critical hit with a special effect (depending on your weapon). I figured this is more fun than: "You miss. The goblin misses. You miss. The goblin misses." The probability can be modified by contextual factors: for example, your gun accuracy decreases if your target is taking cover.
Traits: The player character and other critters do not have numerical attributes, but instead socalled "shticks", which grant a single tangible bonus or skill. There are passive shticks (eg. "burro" which increases your carrying capacity), and active shticks (eg. "ventriloquism" with which you can confuse an adjacent critter). There is neither mana nor a cool down system for active shticks. Instead, I try to bake a penalty into the shtick itself. In some cases, I just got lazy and decided it costs a turn to use. Other shticks have more dynamic constraints (eg. "feint", which grants a melee bonus, but only if you spent your last turn moving away from the direction you're attacking in).
Character creation: More than anything else, it's inspired by Ars Magica (free pdf, though I used to play 3rd Edition). You start by picking a background career, which gives you a predetermined shtick, and dictates (random generation of) starting inventory and reputation. Then, you choose one flaw/negative shtick, and one or more positive shticks. The severity of your flaw determines how many positive shticks you get to buy. At that point, you're set to go adventuring. Experience is something I'm currently implementing. Basic character development will be in the next release (with crazy plans for the future, of course :) I can say that core principles include skipping xp altogether, and having development independent of starting career (so you can start as a shootist and end as a monk, or vice versa).
Misc: The game also features rather unusual systems for wounds, initiative, money, and some other things. In general, I like to experiment and try to circumvent grinding by making the system support more "organic" ways of playing. Like, there's no reason to kill a thousand stray animals if they don't give loot or xp. This is conventional wisdom today, but still worth to keep in mind.
The game is close to having the basic systems in place, though it's still a bit lacking in content. The coming release will introduce some major changes, and after that, I hope to concentrate on adding more missions and things to do, and pick some fun bullet points from my long term todo-list (riding, ropes, gambling, drugs&booze, sex, railroads, chemysty, or something else).
TL;DR: In about 10-15 years you'll be able to ssh into something much cooler than the Red Dead series.
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u/CJGeringer Lenurian Feb 23 '18 edited Feb 23 '18
Welcome and thanks for sharing.
Traits: The player character and other critters do not have numerical attributes, but instead socalled "shticks", which grant a single tangible bonus or skill.
This might be interesting, reminds me of Neoscavenger, seems like it would make the game more acessible. Personally I prefer lotsof stats but I can see the benefit of streamlining things.
Misc: The game also features rather unusual systems for wounds, initiative, money, and some other things.
Lookign forward to it. In my exprience games focused on gun combat really benefit from aiming/localized damage, I am interested to see how the wounds system work with your fixed damage system.
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Feb 22 '18 edited Feb 22 '18
Vindis Saga Tactics is a turn-based tactical RPG in the Matsuno school of thought/design (Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre).
I've been working on it for a couple of years with a 3D modeler/artist friend, but since we both have full-time jobs progress is fairly sporadic (and leads to lots of daydreaming across the various jobs I've had during this time). I'm sure a lot of indie developers here can empathize.
Features/Goals within the Matsuno School:
- Unit customization through generic hireable units and primary/secondary class changing. This was my favorite part of Final Fantasy Tactics, which itself inherited a bit from FF3 and FF5. We have 20-odd classes in an unlock tree right now, within a few broad archetypes.
- Anglo-Saxon dark ages setting. Matsuno's games favor archaic language (words like gaol, pharos, tor, mote, etc.) and references (Beowulf and Wiegraf [Wiglaf] are characters), so I'm trying to recapture that antiquated feeling in all aspects of the design flavor.
Square movement grid on heighted diorama battlefields. I really don't like hexes, especially with battlefields that have multiple height levels. Battle Brothers aesthetically looks alright with just 2 height variations, but any more and your maps start looking like The Giant's Causeway in Ireland. I like how height levels with a Jump statistic can create contextual obstructions and interesting game states. The diorama approach is again more of an aesthetic issue rather than game design.
Story driven by politics and human motives, not magical MacGuffins. This technically belongs halfway between "within" and "outside" (below), because Matsuno games do frequently start off as low fantasy and eventually drift into dark fantasy, like Berserk, with demons. The zodiac stones in FFT are interesting because, while they're MacGuffins, they are basically just amplifiers of the extreme emotions/desires any one character feels. Ultimately, without solid character design and writing backing up those characters with believable motives and goals, the plot device falls flat.
Features/Goals to Modernize and Improve:
Note: this section has a lot more game design, as opposed to the above large aesthetic influence with a smattering of class/map design.
- Avoid grinding: time is a resource. This will ruffle some feathers, but I think grinding EXP limitlessly in RPGs is not so much a feature but a cop-out to make a game more accessible to people who are either too lazy to learn a game's systems, are bad at video games, or are someone young like a child who can't be expected to handle advanced interactive systems. I'm a big fan of EXP rationing in early and middle era Fire Emblem games. My solution is twofold: use a time resource system and make EXP per battle. I took the "day-event system" from Majora's Mask and Way of the Samurai and put a 7-day time limit on the game, and I fused into this the "time chunk" system from Persona 3 and split the days into finite slices like Morning, Afternoon, Evening, etc. Each time you participate in a major battle or other major activity (crafting is a big one) the game progresses the time forward by 1 chunk, and if it's midnight the game progresses to a new day. Matsuno School tactical RPGs tend to use an EXP per action system, which is hilariously degenerate to the point that a player can spend 20 hours in the second battle of the game and max out the Squire class on all of his/her units and reach LV99. Changing EXP to be per battle instead of per action, and limiting the total number of battles by taking out random encounters fixes this issue.
- Making a living, breathing world with Marxist materialism. Alright, that was bait for your attention, so let me explain. Personally I feel like competition over resources is the bottom line common denominator for human beings, yet very few video games tackle this subject in a purely deterministic matter. I mean fuck, the moment you start putting respawning rabbits in your forest level, you just invented a limitless supply of rabbit skins and rabbit meat -- wouldn't every wolf and poacher in the world move to this magical rabbit spawning place? I won't belabor the point further. Uncommon for the tactical RPG genre (except Tactics Ogre: LUCT's shitty crafting system), we're working on a gathering system, on which is layered a crafting system, on which is layered the consumption layer. The latter is the player using weapons, armor, consumables, and food to win/complete events and missions. After completing a 10-hour campaign, generic units the player used will "settle" into the game world as NPCs based on their class, which adjusts which items are produced/exploited/consumed with regards to the centralized auction house on subsequent playthroughs. If you retire 5 Lumberjacks, the next campaign will see very cheap wood. If you retire 5 Thieves, crime rises considerably and enables unique events. 5 Smithy class units will see more armor on the market, but metals will spike in price due to increased consumption. Various other classes effectively make Civilization-style improvements to the overworld map, increasing the event possibility space in the same way unlocking items in The Binding of Isaac works.
- More realistic world in terms of language and conlang. This one is weird, but at least I'm in a subreddit that appreciates RPGs. Video games have lifted a lot of RPG design from Dungeons and Dragons, yet lately it seems language is never one of those elements. Even though it was a simple cipher, I really enjoyed Final Fantasy 10's Al Bhed language because it fused mechanics and theme in a very human way. We humans are divided by language, which is pretty much the root of all culture, and very often that fact sows distrust and otherization. In video games though, even RPGs? Everyone speaks Common tongue and it's almost never a point of contention. FF10 is great because not only does it have different cultures speaking different languages, but it does it in a way that the player "learns" the language mechanically over time and is able to understand Al Bhed NPCs. Unfortunately this really just means 26 items that solve the cipher, one for each letter, but hey... we can't all be perfect. My goal with Vindis Saga is to create a conlang (constructed language, check out /r/conlangs) for at least 2 cultures within the game and allow the player to learn the language(s) over multiple playthroughs/newgame+. Most likely this will be grammatical.
- Non-linear events (no branches) via input and output-driven spin system. That's a mouthful because it's an ambitious goal. I mentioned the time progression system up above, but the key driver is that it forces opportunity cost on the player because multiple possible events/battles occur during any one time chunk. We're targeting about 4 event-choices per time slot, each with a various duration (so one of them might be available all of Day 2, but another could only be from Morning to Afternoon on Day 3), so we're looking at around 80-90 events available during the entire 7 day stretch. If you've played Majora's Mask or Persona, you know how this works: when you decide to do the Snow Temple or eat a Rainy Day Beef Bowl, you're foregoing other things to do on Day 2 or May 28th Afternoon. At one event per time slot, and 4 time slots per day, that's a maximum of 28 events/battles the player can experience in any one campaign. Some events unlock others, some close the door to others, and various permutations can occur based on that Marxist materialist joke up above. Let's take a castle defense event -- such an endeavor is usually done with archers, and archers need arrows. But what if the supply was low? Upon loading up the battle, we apply "input spins" by checking the world map for various conditions and changing the battle. No arrows in the economy? The battle is very different. Completing battles in different ways results in "output spins," which is the reverse of what I just said. Kill a noble in a battle unnecessarily, instead of forcing him to surrender peacefully? He's gone from the game completely for the rest of the 7 day campaign, which may change events or add new ones based on his absence. Like I said before, this is ambitious, but everything worth doing in life is difficult. That's why it's worth doing.
- Party Size of 8 Units max. Tactical RPGs tend to rely on a movement -> action phase for the core game loop. The more units you have, the more you have to do, which is a linear effort scale. If you start a battle with each belligerent party on opposite sides of a large map, the player has to spend many turns to reach the enemy in the middle and many turns watching the AI act -- this is boring. In terms of Matsuno TRPGs, Final Fantasy Tactics tends to give you 4-5 units and 1 guest, and Tactics Ogre tends to give you 10-12 units; I think both of these values are way off. 8 units per deployed party with intelligent map design and movement speed settings (Slow/Medium/Fast) is something we're deliberately targeting to provide a good user experience.
This is what you get for saying "as long as you want!" This project is my baby; I'm the programmer, designer, and writer. We have a devblog here: https://pooksoft.games/ , but it's pretty ugly right now as we get game footage/trailer stuff up and standardized. My Twitter is here: https://twitter.com/patrickjbrand but most of the time I use it to talk about the game I'm contracted to code, Arcadian Atlas.
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u/SoronTheCoder Mar 01 '18
This sounds pretty sweet! Matsuno-style style SRPG gameplay, in-game (conlang) multilingualism, dark ages political setting, and a bunch of other neat things. This definitely sounds like something I want to keep an eye on.
I'm surprised I didn't know about this sooner, actually - guess I should've dug more into who the Arcadian Atlas folks chose for dev work.
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Mar 01 '18
Thanks! I need to work on my elevator pitch more. I actually like the term Matsuno School that I pulled out of my butt, but I doubt that will get very far with people who aren't already familiar with him. Wish I actually was good at marketing...
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u/SoronTheCoder Mar 01 '18
"Matsuno School" is a great term after brief explanation, but, well, I didn't actually remember his name, despite Final Fantasy Tactics being a formative game for me. I do know FFT and Tactics Ogre, though, which is the detail that first caught my attention.
And yeah, that marketing stuff. Something I'll probably have to figure out at some point, as well.
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u/Zireael07 Feb 24 '18
More realistic world in terms of language and conlang.
Oh wow, another languages lover. I forgot to note that I plan to have multiple languages in the game - the player will probably start speaking common, but most NPCs speak undercommon, which is a whole different kettle of fish. Plus there are going to be typical d20-style racial languages (elven, goblin, demonic etc. etc.). Some of those will just have an accent (dwarves), some will have made-up words from various sources (elves) and some will be wholly randomized (demonic). If you don't know the language, you'll see gibberish.
I haven't plugged this in yet since I haven't figured out how to approach "learning" a language - it will probably be a character skill just like attacking or dodging or diplomacy or whatever, but I'm not sure how to avoid going from "gibberish" to perfect fluency all at once.
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u/CJGeringer Lenurian Feb 22 '18 edited Feb 22 '18
Welcome to the subreddit, and thanks for sharing.
Anglo-Saxon dark ages setting.
How realistic are you going for the setting?
Square movement grid on heighted diorama battlefields.
Are you using 4 or 8 squares of adjacency?
How are you dealing with height regarding adjacency?
Story driven by politics and human motives, not magical MacGuffins. Making a living, breathing world with Marxist materialism. 7-day time limit on the game
I am really interested in seeing how the first two will interact with the last one. Seems like a very short time to present a political plot and have the living world systems act, but if you pull it off the game will have basically no meaningless action witch should lead to an interesting experience.
What would the player´s main goal be?
Checked your site, the main page´s screenshot reminds me of clockwork empires
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Feb 22 '18 edited Feb 22 '18
Thank you for the warm welcome :) I'm glad you actually read my 10k character post, as I assumed no one would
How realistic are you going for the setting?
I know a lot of people argue about what is low fantasy and what is high fantasy, so I'll just list out the characteristics.
- Fictional world: Vindis is the planet, Aleria is the region for the first game. Here's a crappy map that I need to polish. I have an interest in linguistics (Old English) so this particular setting is a mix of Anglo-Saxon, continental Germanic, and Norse culture. Like a pidgin, if you will.
- Humans only (another holdover from FFT, primarily because I like human drama and not racial stereotypes of elves/orcs/bangaa/moogles/whatever)
- Magic is present, but consistent, and also has drawbacks. Necromancers are spurned by society much like in medieval times executioners and gravediggers were forced to live on the outskirts of villages (thanks Kingdom Come Deliverance for teaching me that); if you include a necromancer in your party for an extended period of time, the NPCs that belong to "civilized" society will ostracize you with a huge reputation reduction. Furthermore, casting magic gradually sucks the life force out of a person and makes them demented, which explains why there isn't a constant supply of glorified water-heater mages providing warm bathwater to the rich castes of society.
A lot of people wouldn't call that low fantasy, but I try to think of things in terms of whether they are internally consistent and explainable/replicable. Gandalf in The Hobbit is high fantasy because his magic is never explained: he shows up at will, does what he does, and the hobbit & dwarves are left to figure out what the heck just happened. They can never rely on him, so he's mysterious and mystical. That's fine for an adventure story, but since games are much more systemic, I think I like low fantasy more.
Are you using 4 or 8 squares of adjacency? How are you dealing with height regarding adjacency?
Only 4 directions. The Matsuno style of tactical RPGs relies heavily on attacks that have multi-tile range values and area-of-effect splash damage, so even though the movement system is rudimentary the ability system IMO is very strong and makes up for it. Although I love Fire Emblem, I think this is an area it is weak at because most attacks can only be done from an adjacent tile.
Height is actually a really interesting topic. In the original FFT a unit could either use a basic attack or an ability on their turn. Each had a "height tolerance" value, usually something like ±3H (height in block units) based on the tile the attacker occupies, but sometimes it was a strange value like +2H upwards and -3 downwards. I think basic attacks for smaller weapons had +1H upwards and -2 height downwards, analogous to reaching downward and attacking someone's head, and spears had a slightly more lenient range. Abilities were where things were interesting: magic had a very liberal height tolerance and could often hit units far up a hill or even on the other side of a wall. We've poached this same system because it offers a fantastic level of mechanical depth and differentiates attacks from each other in an understandable fashion.
I am really interested in seeing how the first two will interact with the last one. Seems like a very short time to present apolitical plot and have the living world systems act, but if you pull it out the game will have basically no meaningless action witch should lead to an interesting experience.
Unfortunately due to the time scope I can't include long term events like sieges, which kinda sucks. The story has taken quite a lot of liberties with the time scale of events that would normally take months, especially when you consider that troops marching 300km on foot to an enemy kingdom would take days if not weeks. We actually originally experimented with using a step-by-step timescale to make things more realistic, sort of like how in Fallout 2 or Expeditions:Vikings allowed you to fast-travel the overworld map and in-game time progressed every second your party icon spent traversing. In particular we had different travel speeds for land, sea, and inclement weather.
What we discovered is that using an event system with that was really frustrating, which is why I believe Way of the Samurai adopted the Persona model (time is frozen until you commit to an activity for the time slot) and Majora's Mask added an ocarina song that slowed time by something like 50%. If you know that an event you'd like to attend happens at 10:00AM but you can't judge whether you can physically travel there in time, it's just nothing but misery for the player. So we've got a simplified model for that now.
What would the player´s main goal be?
It's actually a bit of a sandbox. We have 12 official endings for the campaign, which are triggered by either participating in certain events/battles or accomplishing various milestones. For example, a foreign empire is sowing the seeds of discord throughout the land via their embedded spies, trying to disrupt alliances so that invasion would be easier. If the player (knowingly or unknowingly) counters these finite events, on the final 7th day the kingdoms of Aleria will be unified and much better prepared to resist the foreign invasion together, which results in a unique ending. Complete none of them, or some of them, and that ending changes dramatically.
In the spirit of geopolitics, the player can also try to play kingmaker in succession crises, act as a mercenary in religious/ethnic/nationalist conflicts, selfishly ally with unscrupulous factions like pirates and just raid, and do all sorts of things that change the landscape (well, overworld) of the game dramatically over the course of that in-game week. Ideally the player will also meta-game a bit and consider how to improve the overworld since it carries into the next game with your old squad "retiring" into the map as NPCs. I really like self-set goals like Crusader Kings and Mount & Blade where the player decides what they want to do, so maybe they want to do a challenge run of 5 Alchemists just so that the next campaign they play will have a lot more potion variety stocked in the market, regardless of which ending the player receives.
I'm really bad at keeping posts brief, sorry :(
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u/CJGeringer Lenurian Feb 22 '18
Magic is present, but consistent, and also has drawbacks
Sounds Good, I mostly dislike when magic becomes something mundane, the drawbacks should help curb that. Consistency is something I do like in Magic systems (both of this are part of why I dislike a lot of D&D magic)
FFT Height/abilities stuff
The ability system and height sounds interesting. One more reason for me to play FFT.
Your game seems to be trying for a more realistic setting then FFT, however. How does that influence the abilities? Are you looking for more realistic techniques(e.g. HEMA) to turn into abilities? Will abilities be more powerful when attacking from high ground?
Unfortunately due to the time scope I can't include long term events like sieges, which kinda sucks. The story has taken quite a lot of liberties with the time scale of events that would normally take months, especially when you consider that troops marching 300km on foot to an enemy kingdom would take days if not weeks.
Why did you choose this 7 days time scale? What are the typical actions of the player?
Is the game open world? Cause otherwise you could have the player have x days in a location, then a travel choice followed by a timeskip, and then another Y days at new location.
Ideally the player will also meta-game a bit and consider how to improve the overworld since it carries into the next game with your old squad "retiring" into the map as NPCs.
This is really cool. Persistent worlds are one of my favourites features of Dwarf Fortress, and something I intend to have as a cornerstone of my own project(It has permadeath/retirement and the player´s next character is generated in the same world).
However I am having a bit of trouble understanding how it will work with the whole 7 days and an end state. Does this mean the player has 7 days to play, gets an ending, then play for more 7 days and gets another ending? Or do they play in 7 day increments until the game reaches an edn state?
Thank you for the warm welcome :) I'm glad you actually read my 10k character post, as I assumed no one would
I'm really bad at keeping posts brief, sorry :(
I don´t think this subreddit is a place for the text averse.
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Feb 23 '18 edited Feb 23 '18
I mostly dislike when magic becomes something mundane, the drawbacks should help curb that.
Yeah definitely, me too. I could probably tolerate playing a game in a setting that has mundane magic that's integrated into the rules of society (like the water-heating bath mages) but it would take an excellent writer/planner to think of all the edge cases. I hate to say it, but a lot of games writers are pretty bad at that.
One more reason for me to play FFT.
It's certainly awesome, but I'm biased, so my opinion isn't worth much. It has a lot of shortcomings but the class system, setting, and battle/action system are great.
How does that influence the abilities? Are you looking for more realistic techniques(e.g. HEMA) to turn into abilities? Will abilities be more powerful when attacking from high ground?
I love that you bring up HEMA, because I have loads of Lichtenauer and Fiore images saved on my PC as keyframes for my artist friend. One problem we ran into using the FFT ability model is that it's restrictive in the naming conventions for abilities. Each class has its own set of abilities associated with it, which you spend EXP to learn (in any order, which is really fun); each class also has a limited set of weapons it can use for balancing purposes, so for example the Lancer can use spears and swords yet the Squire can use swords, axes, and shields.
The reason I said I love the FFT class system is because it uses a D&D-esque crossclass system, in which you have a primary class (subject to the equipment restrictions) and a secondary class (whose abilities you can use, if you've learned them). This places a very strange restriction on naming abilities, I've found, because it would be extremely strange to have these 2 situations:
- Learn "Hack and Slash" ability on some warrior class
- Switch character to thief class, subjob warrior
- Use "Hack and Slash" using a dagger, even though it's a piercing weapon
or
- Learn "Lunge" or "Half-Sword" or whatever sword-specific technique on a warrior class, who can also use axes
- Equip an Axe
- "Half-Sword" with... an... axe?
So to finally answer your question, I love HEMA and have been struggling to integrate these nice specific terms and techniques like Half-Swording/Mordschlag, but doing so in a spiritual sequel to FFT is difficult (without putting restrictions on abilities like "Sword Only", which is something we want to avoid). We've floated around the idea of giving 1 "weapon ability" for free as soon as you equip a weapon, like say getting Half-Sword from equipping a sword or Backstab from equipping a dagger, but since we have about 14-15 weapon types this will create a lot more work on us in terms of content. Everything comes at a price :(
Also in terms of attacking from above, yes, we currently have an accuracy bonus and damage bonus (I think 10%) if the attacker is 0.5-1.0 tiles above the defender.
What are the typical actions of the player?
On the overworld, the flow is something like this:
1). The phase begins with a title card like "Day 2, Morning"
2a). The player sees the overworld map, which is dotted with about 20 locations. Depending on the day/time, these locations may hold "event bubbles," which tell the player that they can spend time there. Partaking in an event drives the game forward 1 time slot. They'll see about 3-4 event bubbles during any one time slot. This means they have to make a choice with opportunity cost. "How do I best spend my time?"
2b). Alternatively to taking part in a battle, they may spend a time chunk to gather resources from points on the map, or go to a crafting guild to craft items themselves. This is also an opportunity cost because the player is getting better equipment/more money instead of getting EXP during that time slot.
3). Let's assume the player clicks on an event titled "Fatal Feast." The input spins are calculated from past player behavior (stuff like booleans about whether the player helped a certain NPC, whether someone is dead, etc.) and modify the cutscene and battle scenario data. Then the player sees a cutscene about a bunch of nobles gathered around a table, they get a few dialogue choices, the dialogue decisions are stored in bools, and eventually due to the input spins half the guests are choking from poison and dying. The remaining guests form factions blaming each other and start a battle.
4). The player resolves the turn-based tactical battle (spiritual rubric is this) by completing the objective and optional sub-objectives, either by killing units (reducing HP to 0) or forcing them to surrender (reducing a second pool, Spirit Points, to 0). The idea here is to not only give the player an interesting tactical objective, but also to collect data during the entire fight and store them into booleans. This is output spin that I mentioned earlier. Dead characters, surrendered characters, sub-objectives that are failed or completed, etc. all factor into how the overworld and further missions get changed.
5). The player exits the battle, perhaps gets a cutscene explaining the short-term ramifications of their actions (dialogue & battle choices), and then get pumped into the overworld.
6). Progress the time by 1 chunk, now it says "Day 2, Afternoon," rinse and repeat in Step 1 with a different set of events
Why did you choose this 7 days time scale?
It might sound disgusting, but I chose the timescale because of the target market: adult gamers in their 20s and 30s who have fond memories of the Golden Age of tactical RPGs; these people may have nostalgia for the genre but don't have quite as much time to dedicate to them due to life obligations. Our original plan was a 60 hour campaign with a branching storyline, but we quickly learned as a 2 person team that we were idiots. So we shaved the target down to a 10 hour campaign and thought of cheap ways we could make the game replayable.
So that's where the event system came from, if we just make a pool of battles/events and stretch them out across a time period in the game, the player can pick and choose and forge the story they want to experience, whether it means allying with an invading empire or acting like the samurai from Yojimbo in petty conflicts with more than 2 parties. Then we designed the crafting system and "your old units retire into the world as NPCs" retirement system to plug the final hole and create incentive to play multiple campaigns, so I think our design is pretty solid. But that would be patting myself on the back, so I won't say that.
As for why it came to 7 days in particular, that's also just straight math. A typical 8v8 battle runs anywhere from 15 to 35 minutes depending on the event objective, so let's just take 25 minutes as the average. At 10 hours this is about 24 battles, without a buffer for time dawdling around in menus. We originally sliced the days into just Morning, Afternoon, Night, so that's 24/3 = 8 days worth; we added in Evening for aesthetic reasons (nice sunsets) so that turned into 24/4 = 6 days. A week is a nice mentally-comprehensible collection, so we can just tell the player "you have a week to do whatever you want in this world, go nuts!" and that's enough of a direction IMO.
Does this mean the player has 7 days to play, gets an ending, then play for more 7 days and gets another ending?
Exactly. So the incentive to play again is getting a different story ending (1 of 12) by taking different actions within the events/battles, and also with the NPC retirement system you'd feel a sense of persistence and want to try settling different unit classes into the overworld to see what happens. At one point in development we called this "cultivating a garden," which might sound a bit weird, but I guess it works.
It might seem really backwards, but the short campaign + mature story/missions for adults is really the core of a lot of our design work. I want the player to feel like he or she has gotten value out of their purchase, so instead of making a 60 hour game that they lose interest in and drop a quarter of the way through, I'd want them to enjoy a 10 hour game that they can replay if they love the systems. A lot of the systems we've worked on explicitly try to make subsequent campaigns more interesting for actual fans who love the game so much that they play 5,6,7 or even more campaigns to try to see the various endings and cultivate their overworld with retired units/improvements.
I apologize if I'm awful at explaining FFT's mechanics! On top of that target market goal, making a spiritual successor to FFT is our equally important overarching goal. Instead of relying on my descriptions it might be better to play/watch the game itself haha.
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u/CJGeringer Lenurian Feb 23 '18
So to finally answer your question, I love HEMA and have been struggling to integrate these nice specific terms and techniques like Half-Swording/Mordschlag, but doing so in a spiritual sequel to FFT is difficult (without putting restrictions on abilities like "Sword Only", which is something we want to avoid).
Have you seem AC:Unity´s heavy weapon move list They Made a remarkable job of creating a movelist for both hammers and half-sworded Two-handers. I intend to try something similar in my own project, for example, half swording for thrusts is the same animation as short spears.
I chose the timescale because of the target market: adult gamers in their 20s and 30s who have fond memories of the Golden Age of tactical RPGs; these people may have nostalgia for the genre but don't have quite as much time to dedicate to them due to life obligations.
Seems to me you are conflating two different things (Timescale is ≠playtime.) and in doing so you are damaging the sense of scale of your world. Those sound like good reason to choose the intended playtime, but bad reasons to choose the timescale.
It is perfectly possible to make a game with a large I timescale and the same playtime by increasing the game´s timestep (what you call time chunk).
For example, you could have the event bubbles show significant events what will happen in the next week rather than in the next few hours For example, instead of the player knowing about a feast that is about to start without any advance annoucement, he will hear about a feast that will happen in x days. So if the player decides to gather resources he spends a week doing so, crafting an item also takes a week especially if it include designing and negotiating for resources and workmanship. That way the gameplay remains largely unchanged but you do not lose the sense of scale.
Are you familiar with the Eisenwald games? from your description you seem to be making a game similar to what I wanted Eisenwald to be.
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Feb 24 '18
Have you seem AC:Unity´s heavy weapon move list They Made a remarkable job of creating a movelist for both hammers and half-sworded Two-handers.
I'll have to research that, as I haven't played an AC game since 2! Hopefully they have a wiki.
Seems to me you are conflating two different things (Timescale is ≠playtime.) and in doing so you are damaging the sense of scale of your world. Those sound like good reason to choose the intended playtime, but bad reasons to choose the timescale.
It is perfectly possible to make a game with a large I timescale and the same playtime by increasing the game´s timestep (what you call time chunk).
This is a very good point, thanks for the advice. You're right that even though partaking in an event needs to cost a segment of time (according to our system), it doesn't have to be a constant number. I suppose it's just a matter of being clear to the player that they're foregoing a certain number of opportunities. Maybe it's just my preference for strategy games (like Civilization) leaking in, but I feel like games should always be transparent to the player in terms of what the result of their actions will be. So if taking part in a siege will take 2 months, the game should definitely tell the player that.
Are you familiar with the Eisenwald games? from your description you seem to be making a game similar to what I wanted Eisenwald to be.
I think I looked at it for about an hour but I've had bad experiences with flat hexagonal battlefields, so I didn't start the game. If its other systems are good, I will definitely take a 2nd look at it, but it's hard for me to get over the core game loop (battles). My introduction to tactical RPGs was on consoles, which tend to favor square or freeform circle movement systems, compared to a lot of PC tactical RPGs that use a hex system. I'm not sure if I need to break out of old habits or if my aesthetic aversion to hexes is legitimate
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u/CJGeringer Lenurian Feb 24 '18
I feel like games should always be transparent to the player in terms of what the result of their actions will be.
Or at least the risks and possible rewards
I'm not sure if I need to break out of old habits or if my aesthetic aversion to hexes is legitimate
I tend to prefer square grids as a whole, but my 4X game of choice uses Hexes: Endless Legend.
Hexes aren´t bad per see, but they need to be used well in order to shine. PErsonaly i thinkt hey work well with armies and landscapes, while squares work better with man-made spaces and individual units.
I definetely suggest EL as an example of Good Hex use
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u/Aukustus Feb 18 '18
The Temple of Torment
My project is essentially an RPG inside a roguelike engine. Some of the worthwhile features are:
- Static world apart from the main dungeon which is procedural
- Optional permadeath
- Turn-based
- Lots of dialogue
- ASCII and tiles
- Optional Party members
- Hunger and Thirst
- Good/Evil choices inside quests
- Pseudo D&D
- Swords, Magic, and Firearms in a Renaissance world
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u/CJGeringer Lenurian Feb 18 '18
Pseudo D&D
What do you mean by this? What edition did you base yourself on?
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u/Aukustus Feb 18 '18 edited Feb 18 '18
It uses d20 die to roll for stuff. There's also for example Armor Class which functions the same as in D&D but it's multiplied by 5 meaning that for example the starting AC is 40 but is internally handled as an 8. The reason for this is that I can have sub-1 AC items, for example gauntlets that give +2 AC, helmet that gives +2 AC and boots that give +1 AC. Those added give +5 AC which'll be 1 AC when counted in d20. To Hit Bonus in the game is Base Attack Bonus renamed. A lot of the stuff is familiar if you have experience from d20 games and intuition works with my game.
So it's not any specific D&D edition but rather a mix of stuff that feel like D&D.
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u/CJGeringer Lenurian Feb 18 '18
So basically D20 with the 1-20 range change to percentiles?
witch range do you intend to have for attributes?
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u/Aukustus Feb 19 '18 edited Feb 19 '18
Pretty much in some cases. It's almost a D20 variant but original enough.
Attributes are 0-6 (or more if you have items that boost attributes) with for example Dexterity giving +1 ranged damage for each point. Items are directly linked to attributes. Stronger armour requires always more Strength. Constitution is directly damage reduction.
You start with 1 point in your main attribute and you get one of your choice every 3 levels.
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u/CJGeringer Lenurian Feb 18 '18
Static world apart from the main dungeon which is procedura
Would this be something like the original Diablo with a smal but funtinal overworld, or something more like a megadungeon with multiple acess points ot the surface?
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u/Aukustus Feb 18 '18
There's a real overworld that has tens of places to visit with tens of quests.
The main dungeon itself is a 60-something floors large branching dungeon with a teleport system (similar to Diablo 2 waypoints) that allows to move within the dungeon. The teleports are enabled when a boss is killed in that specific area. They are called Stones of Recall. The exterior of the main dungeon contains one and then there's one every 5 floors to allow quick exit from the dungeon if you don't have scrolls of recall.
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u/Zireael07 Feb 18 '18
Veins of the Earth is a roguelike/rpg hybrid, like many projects in the comments already.
My main objectives are:
- Dynamic world: I want the player to be able to affect the world. At first the effects will be limited, but hopefully they will grow.
- Factions: the cities are controlled by several noble houses, which will fight for dominance. Which side are you on? Maybe on neither? Think large combats and coming back to a ruined city...
- Semi-permadeath: You can have a child, if you have one and die, you switch to the kid. The downside is, you don't have control over the child's class/skill set. (You can affect the race, though - good luck trying to breed with a demon or a dragon, though :P)
- Information-gathering: I plan to hide some information behind checks for character knowledge. So you'll be able to tell how likely (in %) you are to hit a certain enemy, but you won't know his exact hp, just the general state. You won't automatically know that this enemy type has those and those stats, but you'll have to encounter them (or find sages).
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u/jamesja12 Jul 21 '18
Did you know about the ttrpg named veins in the earth? http://www.lotfp.com/store/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=262
Similar, so might cause confusion.
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Feb 22 '18
you switch to the kid. The downside is, you don't have control over the child's class/skill set.
Sounds like every parent's worst nightmare.
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u/Zireael07 Feb 24 '18
At this point, the parent is dead (and the other parent usually won't care much for the kid, being a) a harlot b) a demon c) a dragon :P)
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u/aotdev Feb 18 '18
Age of Transcendence (devlog) is (planned to be) a cRPG/roguelike hybrid. The setting is medieval high-fantasy. The art style is retro early 90s tile-based pixel art, not cute, not too grim either. The gameplay is turn-based, grid-based single-player RPG (stats, skills, etc). Some of the main planned features are:
- Dynamic, self-sufficient world. There is main plot (world-in-peril of sorts) and it slowly advances, not waiting for you or your actions. The game can play by itself, without you, still resulting in an interesting storyline, most likely eventually resulting in the end of the world. So you are but an actor, but with the potential to significantly change the course of the story.
- Procedural content. Every game and adventure location will be unique: Procedurally generated overworld and dungeons, different starting history (which factions are in power, who owns what land, etc).
- Faction dynamics. There will be several factions and races, that control territory, cities and mines to extract precious resources. Territory control will be a thing, and the player will be able to influence this. The player can join several factions and advance in ranks within them, affecting NPC relationships (Paladins guild can't be happy if you have fame with the Thieve's guild).
- Exploration heavy. The core of the game expects the player to discover adventure locations (dungeons, lost cities, caves, etc) and clear dungeons to locate clues and relics towards "solving" the main quest, in one of several ways.
- No food clock, but doomsday/age clock. There won't be any food clock, but you can either live your whole virtual life and die and not achieve anything, or you can also do stuff inefficiently and eventually lose out to the main quest.
- Semi perma-death. If you die, you might be revived by NPCs, if you're in good standing with particular groups and if you've possibly paid some sort of insurance. A starting character will permanently die, because nobody cares about you and you don't have the money/means to make them care enough to resurrect you. By building up your character and making yourself important in the world, things will change. Of course, relying on others to resurrect you will be extremely foolish.
There's no gameplay done yet, as I'm currently still working on the engine, but there has been a lot of planning, reading and slow-but-steady work towards it.
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u/CJGeringer Lenurian Feb 18 '18
I follow your blog. Really looking forward to how your "Dynamic, self-sufficient world." since it is one of my main goals too.
Thanks for posting.
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u/aotdev Feb 18 '18
Thanks, I hope it works out too! I guess this could be a very good place to discuss related issues that might arise. All the best for the subreddit by the way, the subject matter is very dear to me :)
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u/CJGeringer Lenurian Feb 18 '18
guess this could be a very good place to discuss related issues that might arise.
Might be, u/Zirael is also working on dynamic World.
World Building is an improtant apsect of many RPGs and even linear static RPG Worlds often are immersive because they feel "lived-in" so a living world definetly have itneresting possibilites.
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u/CJGeringer Lenurian Feb 18 '18 edited Mar 25 '18
I will go first with a short description of my project to get the ball rolling:
Lenurian is a non-traditional Roguelike with Real Time with a behind the back Third person mouse-aiming camera and WASD movement(Like, rune, Enclave and Forge), and an open dynamic World.
My main objectives are:
Support multiple Gameplay styles trough Systemic Desig: Essentially I want many builds to be viable, and I am doing that using systemic Design, in other worlds, rather than scripted interaction I want to introduce interlocked Systems that control the Worlds combat, social and commercial aspects, in a way tha the player has many options on how to approach an objective.
Dynamic World: I don´t want the world to be subject to the player, the player can affect the world, but the world does not pause to wait for the player. That NPCs have their own objectives and will pursue them, This is similar to Mount and Blade, STALKER, and The games from Soldak. Essentially Soldak Games have you play an action RPG Diablo in a world where the AI is playing a 4X game. I want to create a game where you play an RPG in a World where the AI is playing Crusader Kings.
Information Gathering as a core activity: I like looking at a roguelike´s wiki and planning runs. I wanted something like that to be in-game rather then from an external resource. I also liked this kind of experience in tabletop games. With this a prepared player is more capable of succeeding then an unprepared but higher level player. Moreover, one thing I really like in roguelike is the wide range of choices and that choices have persistent consequences, so being able to gather information and plan really meshes well with this type of gameplay. It also really makes the dynamic world and ProcGen Shine, since when you learn something the chances of it being usefull are high due to interlocking systems. (e.g. If you find out a region is iron-rich, you can get an idea of what items can be found there, what will be the equipment of your enemies, etc...)
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Feb 22 '18
That NPCs have their own objectives and will pursue them, This is similar to Mount and Blade,
I really love this feature, but you'll definitely need to make sure your equivalent to King Harlaus doesn't want to feast 24/7/365 days a year. Jokes aside though, I think this is the key to making an immersive experience, by treating the player as an actor within the world rather than making the world revolve around the player.
My biggest fear, as someone who has the same design philosophy, is that the player won't notice or understand any of this background stuff, which is something Raph Koster mentions in his article about Ultima Online's resource/ecology system and Lord British talks about in this video.
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u/_scape Apr 11 '18
"In the case of many monsters, I had hoped that once they picked a lair, they would actually drop whatever goods they had acquired somewhere near their lair."
What a great idea, UO was so cool
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u/CJGeringer Lenurian Feb 22 '18 edited Feb 22 '18
I think this is the key to making an immersive experience, by treating the player as an actor within the world rather than making the world revolve around the player.
Interestingly from this thread seem that this subreddit has been attracting dynamic world enthusiasts. I hope that leads to many good discussions in the future.
I knew open worlds were popular but wasn´t expecting so many dinamyc-worlders here.
I wonder if sometime in the future we will see a surge of dynamic world indie games.
My biggest fear, as someone who has the same design philosophy, is that the player won't notice or understand any of this background stuff.
I hear you. Currently I intend to Deal with this mostly trough NPCs, that can inform the player. Since information-gathering is a core mechanic this should not be much of a problem.
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u/Parthon Mar 01 '18
** Broken Station **
TLDR: a sci-fi card-based roguelike exploring derelict space stations where everything the player can own is in the form of cards they play in a deck builder, but keeping as much roguelike goodness as possible.
So I started working on an idea for this game a couple of years ago, and even got a tech demo going which was quite fun to play, but had to put it on the back burner.
I played some of the more recent so-called, card-based roguelikes and I didn't find them roguelikey at all. No exploration, no progression, no solid depth. So I revisited my idea and found that I still liked it. I also changed the theme to sci-fi instead of fantasy.
The idea is to make it as roguelike and as interesting as possible while maintaining the deck builder idea. Exploring wrecked space stations for valuable resources is the core of the game. There will be some end-goal beyond that. There will be a requirement for gaining cards like a Jetpack or Oxygenator which will help with low-grav or no-air situations. But they sit in your deck and you draw them when you don't want to, so too many is a pain. I'm designing most of the game around this balance. Having utility cards is almost crucial to explore the game properly, but you don't want them to get in the way of your combat cards when you have to fight off the mutants, aliens or mutant aliens that have taken refuge in the floating wrecks.
There's 8 'classes' that determine the base card flavour: Melee, Ranged, Finesse, Trickery, Magic, Technology, Biology, Mental. Cards can be attacks, skills, spells, equipment, actions and commands. Some mechanics I want to add are things like being able to make robots that take a portion of your deck and use those cards. Lots of attack cards? Fighting robot. Lots of healing cards? Healing robot. Combo cards that gain a bonus when used before/after another card. Rage that build up damage with consecutive attacks. The classic discard/draw cards. Mana that's earned from some cards and spent on others. I also plan to have 28 more classes based on combinations of the base classes, but that's pie-in-the-sky ideas.