Waldschattenspiel Inspiration

     After thorough contemplation of the affect of the mechanics and the feeling I would like to convey, I am going to make an overhaul. I am scrapping the upgrade system as it currently exists and replacing it with 2D ray-casting as to create more of a feeling of vulnerability. I had recently played Waldschattenspiel, a german board game that uses a candle and stand-up wooden trees. One player rolls to move the candle, trying to find the other players who hide in the shadows of the trees. The tension that emerged when the candle neared the hidden players, like a wolf sniffing out prey, was wonderful! I really want to convey feeling that would arise from actually getting lost in the woods- wounded, starving, alone- trying to hide from the beasts and make your way, rather than immediately having all the power. I think that this would be a more engaging and unique experience than that from simple upgrades. The player may achieve such power later in the game as to enforce a sense of progression, but it will not be to as much of an extreme extent as I had thought of before.

Upgrade Systems, Tribesmen, Exploration

     Well my hard drive has failed and I am currently trying to recover my data. Aside, I have determined how the weapons, armor, skills and magic will but upgraded, as well as adding/pruning some to/from each.
     XP will be used for upgrading skills and unlocking/upgrading spells. Spells will be found at shrines around the map, but will not be usable immediately, as they must be unlocked with XP first. Materials will be used to upgrade/craft weapons and armor. Weapons thus have 3 types (blade, blunt, axe), which each have different armor penetration amounts. Each weapon type has 3 weapons therein, each with its own stats for attack speed, range and damage. Each of these attributes can be upgraded individually. There are 3 types of armor, light, medium and heavy, There are two armors within each type. Each type has pros and cons. Armor has a protection amount and a speed detriment, which can both be upgraded.
     Skills currently include melee, dodge, parry, stealth and persuasion. Melee will have unique melee attacks and maybe upgrades to melee attacks generally. Dodge can upgrade your dodge speed, frequency and distance. Parry can upgrade your chance to reduce damage, chance to negate damage and damage reduction amount. Stealth upgrades the distance at which you are visible to enemies. Persuasion upgrades your chance of certain enemies being friendly and the amount of help they may give you.
     NPCs are varied, many and usually not of this world. NPCs can either be friendly, hostile or mixed. Mixed NPCs have a chance depending on your persuasion and the NPC itself to be friendly/hostile. Tribesmen will have camps in the wild upon which you may stumble. If you do and you have your weapon out, they will attack. If not, they may help you, ignore you, or attack you regardless. This has to be fleshed out more still. NPC difficulty is determined by hit points, magic resistance, armor, speed and damage. Not all NPCs will have magic resistance, armor or damage. The difficulty of enemies depends on their nearness to a town. 
     Spells can be upgrade on the basis of duration, damage, distance, debuff and recharge time, depending which is applicant to each spell. There is no mana, but each spell has a cooldown.
     As in real life, you will have a map in your notebook, but you will not know where you are in said map. You can have tribesmen show you, or it will update when you reach a town, but aside you must explore the jungle with the risk of getting lost. If you venture too far from town you may die, but this is where the most deadly creatures, and most valuable harvests, lie. You can only heal in towns, or at some tribal camps. Maps will be generated on each play through, keeping experiences unique. The overall map will be the same, but the placement of the locations therein will change. I have many types of locations, but I have to filter out some.
     I need to determine how the player acquires materials, when Raum shows up, how the 3 remaining antideluvians are involved, how the final battle will play out, how tribesmen will work moreso and I'm concerned about the uniqueness of experience of different weapons so I may look at that.

Gameplay Revision

     After reviewing the demands of the mechanics and where my priorities lie, I have determined that some pretty radical changes are in order. The core gameplay is that of combat, exploration and progression. Having complex characters in town and such a heavy focus on the story do not benefit the core game loop, but rather are polish. Being a single developer, I haven't the resources for such polish. The character generator will still be used to create the main story related characters, but I think most NPCs will be in town and they will talk among themselves and such, but the focus is not really on them. In the game, the goal is to accrue sufficient power to stop Raum, the god driven into corruption by betrayal and power. There will be magical powers to be had representing each of the 7 gods. As the player fights to the points where these powers lie, they gain XP which can be used to upgrade skills and magical powers. Skills include melee, ranged, dodge/run, block, ect. They also will gain materials that can be used to create and upgrade weapons and pieces armor, each with its own varying stats. This creates dynamic experiences for the player by allowing them to choose what combination of gear, skills and magic they want to focus on. The shrines at which they player will aquire the magical powers are placed around the map and must be found through exploration. As the player gains XP and upgrades their gear, their power increases. Once their power reaches a point, they must face Raum. Being the case, the player will must use and upgrade the magical powers they find early on, as they don't know what they will have later and they will need this power to progress. This will make the player get used to using all of the magical abilities through various play-throughs. As the final battle draws nearer, there will be aesthetic indications in the game world to indicate the shift. The landscape will darken, NPCs will become confused, trees will die, ect. This will be accomplished by having two similar tilesets and having the darker one, overlayed atop the original set, have an opacity related to the percentage of the players power (determined by the amount of materials+XP) until Raum.
     Next I need to determine if there will be factions, quests, how the enemies will work, be balanced and progress. I think that I want to have the enemies not be scaled, but rather have various areas where their power differs. If this is the case though, what is the player's inclination to fight the more powerful enemies instead of only fighting the weaker ones and saving their XP until Raum comes so that they can use the optimal magical power / ability combination. I want there to be a trade off between using your XP early on to fight powerful monsters to get [something...] and saving your XP until later to use a more optimal strategy as you will know which magical powers you will get (greedy vs optimal).

Character Gen

     I was considering the amount of time it will take to create the depth of the characters in the game that I want to achieve and it had become quite clear that this was not going to be feasible by doing each one by hand. To circumvent this, I've created a character generator.

      The generator uses information provided by rpg.ashami.com (much thanks!) to randomly roll a character's traits. The name is modifiable, though I could add a random name element, I'm thinking I'd rather have a list of names and pull from the list as I go so I can make sure there are no repeats and that the families make sense. I may, as well, include generation of backstories  and professions, though it may be more compelling to create those based on their attributes. I want every character in the game to feel real and alive, so it is very important to me that they all have very fleshed out, human personalities. I don't intend to explicitly use any of the information provided here, I just want to have an understanding of the character motivations so that I can effectively write their dialog and actions. I've written some more of the story as well. I've gotten some more items on paper (spreadsheet anyway..) and thus some lore. I've used this character generator to create a character who will help you through the start of the game, Victor Govan (good friends with Guthrie Wooten? ;D ). More soon.

Progress!

I've got some sheets going with items, mostly weapons. They're balanced based on their damage, attack speed and range. Some armors are in the works as well. I've gotten the means by which NPCs determine their feelings towards the player and each other which will use the basis of the "Big 5" physiological domains as well as other factors. I plan to have NPCs portray personalities based on their traits by pulling from a dialog database. I've redesigned the casting system for the magic and I'm very excited about this mechanic. I've designed the spells (icons, casting, effects) as well. Controls are established as I go but I have a map of what they'll be for PC/Mac/OUYA. The back story is pretty much done. I've made a few textures to test a map design I'd made for the purposes of determining my means of reading in and designing levels. I've updated Retronaut with a better mix. Not sure if I'm going to use this ingame as it's a bit busy, but its a good reference. Next, the main story line will be established which will entail establishing some of the quests.

Music, Magic, Michael

I've been trying to work out some of the instruments to be used for the final tracks. I've created a demo, "Retronaut", which has a nice ambient pad, kick, bass, distorted guitar and closed hat. I'd like to work on the snare and open hat sounds, clean up the high end on the pad a bit and get some more instruments working; updates as they happen.

Check that out here:

After prioritizing "The List.", I've found it most useful to put the tasks into chunks, as some tasks are co-dependent on others. The first group includes combat, magic, controls therein, weapons and spellls. I've figured out the the combat system [(attacking, blocking, ect.) + controls] and delved into the magic mechanics a bit. 

I'm working with a close friend of mine, Michael Park, to get a backstory/story established. He's just revealed his first pass and all I can say is that I was nothing short of blown away. I'm excited to say he'll be doing a lot of the writing so I can't wait to see what he comes up with next.

I plan to finish designing the magic system and design the weapons + spells to wrap up the first chunk.

The List.™

     I've created an itemized list of objectives. Priority is 1-5, most important to least respectively. Time goes from 5-50 (basically a 1-10 scale) and is roughly representative of days. These are multiplied to get a weighted value; lower is better. Green items are to be included, yellow are maybes, red are probably not. At the bottom are the approximate days to complete each color (timeTotals/3).

     Next I will prioritize the list and then start breaking ground on designing specific elements.

ABitABeat

I was looking through some VSTs to use to make the music and found VOPM which emulates the Sega Genesis chip. I'd used it to make a test loop. No doubt fidelity will increase as I learn how to use the plugin further.

Check it out here: 

I've since watched a tutorial video which was quite useful here: 

As well, I've outlined all of elements that have to be designed. I may add more but this is everything I could think of. I'm sifting through these options to decide what to keep and what is out of scope.

Designing "Topdown"

I've begun the design work on a topdown, 2D, exploration based game. For the time being I'm just referring to it as "Topdown" until it's more fleshed out. I'm not going to break ground on development until the game is entirely designed. It will have RPG elements and be set in a fictional ancient universe. I want to ensure that the backstory, and main story line if it pertains, are simply setting a space for players to create their own story and experience. The world will have a theme that's mostly realistic with some fantasy elements and a simplistic visual aesthetic. The world will generally be dark and gritty in a very serious sense, but at times it may give way to clean, safe areas to break up the flow. I'm compiling a list of tasks that need to be completed for me to consider the design "finished". I've got a ton of ideas I'd like to implement, but chances are I'll be doing a good bit of pruning.