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THE TUMULTUOUS TOPIC OF TUNDRA TIDBITS TO TEAR AT
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Trihan
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CloseOkay, now that we've got the obligatory alliteration out of the way, I can get to the point: as some of the community knows (and most probably don't) I've been working on my game for 12 years. Yeah, you heard that right. I started my game in goddamn two thousand and one.
Tundra is now and has always been a labour of love, emphasis on the labour. The fact of the matter is that I'm really good at starting things and utterly suck at following through with them.
This topic is essentially going to be a repository for my system concepts and ideas, all the stuff I've thought of over the years and went "hey, that would be cool."
Why am I doing this? Well my girlfriend and I just started working on the game again after I was explaining some of my ideas and plot points to her, and she's really excited about it. This is a girl who has no love for RPGs whatsoever, so if she's excited I think I'm onto a winner, and I'd like some feedback on stuff I'm planning on putting into it. So without further ado, let's get started! (Please note that these are still just concepts. I don't think I'll be able to put everything into one game, much as I'd like to, and I'm aware that there is such a thing as too many features)
Your game, the way you want to play it
Something I've seen a lot, particularly in reviews, is players occasionally scoring lower than they otherwise would have because of a specific part of the game that wasn't quite as fun/entertaining/accessible as it could have been. I've always been interested in solutions to this, and I've seen some games that skirt on an elegant way of dealing with it, but I want to take it to a new level by making the game experience customisable.
What do I mean by this? Well basically, if you don't like battles you can turn the battle system off. If you think the encounter rate is too high, make it lower. Too low? Make it higher. Puzzle too hard? Disable puzzles. At the end of the day I'm making a game to tell a story; the systems and features are garnish. If you don't like a feature, I'd rather you turn it off and continue to experience the story than give up on my game. If anyone else has done customisation on this scale please let me know how it worked out for you. Either way feel free to offer your thoughts.
NPCs that live
Too often an NPC in a game is a coloured brick that repeats the same message ad nauseum every time you press enter next to it. It might as well be a signpost with legs. Sometimes NPCs change their dialogue after major story events, but this can sometimes backfire when you forget to update them and they're still talking about their town being destroyed after it's been rebuilt. Even commercial RPGs tend not to put a huge amount of effort into their NPCs.
What I want (if it's even possible; I've done some tests in the past that suggest it is, but it would be a ton of work) is for my NPCs to almost be PCs in their own right. I want them to have names, backstories, movement patterns, schedules, conflicts, arguments, relationships...blah blah blah etc. etc.
In practice this would still obviously need to be scripted, but I've always wanted my world to actually feel like it's alive, down to the random insignificant people who populate it.
Probably a huge pipe dream because if it could be done someone would likely have done it already, but the good thing about concepts is I don't have to be bound by reality. :) Thoughts and comments welcome.
Battles you have to think about
A few people have already heard about my battle system concept, so I'll keep this one short and sweet. Essentially it's like Vagrant Story in a turn-based environment. Enemies will have targetable "parts" dependent on their species (so humanoids will have a head, torso, two arms and two legs, spiders will have a body and eight legs etc), which have a percentage of the enemy's base HP and are tied to one or more statistics/abilities. When a part is damaged linked stats will decrease, and if "killed" the enemy will lose the linked abilities (playing with the idea of having killed parts auto-revive after X turns to keep it interesting)
This opens up a number of interesting possibilities, like a warrior enemy who deals devastating physical attacks, so you should focus on his arms to reduce his damage output and then take him down. Note that whatever part you attack the base HP still goes down so it's never a waste of a turn to go after a particular part. I'm currently working on a StarCraft-esque "wireframe" overlay to show body parts and their status.
This is probably the most ambitious system I've ever devised and also ironically enough the one I've made the most progress with, but criticism, comments and suggestions are as always welcome.
A magic system that puts you in control
Tying in with my "the player makes the game, I provide the story" ethos, the two magic users in my game won't have a static list of spells they can learn. Rather, they will have a number of slots (which increases as they level) into which the player can assign their own spells using runes (which has a logical in-game explanation as well) which determine the effect of the spell, how powerful it is, and how much MP it costs. So you can have a huge array of really powerful spells that'll drain your MP in a couple of turns, or a variety of small and useful utility spells, or a mixture. It's really up to you.
At the moment, the plan is for there to be a rune assignment for targeting (one enemy, all enemies etc), element (fire, ice, etc), damage (light, medium, heavy), and additional effect (could be anything from a damage multiplier to inflicting a status ailment). Not only will the spells have their costs determined by the combination of runes, but I'll use a clever little system of affixes and suffixes I came up with to give them all their own names too, which will hopefully keep things fresh.
And again in tandem with my goal of giving the player more control, you can opt to just have your spells decided for you instead of using the crafting system.
------
That's about all I can think of that I wanted to share so far. Maybe I've been wasting my time for over a decade and these are all the worst ideas ever. Maybe I'll inspire you with an idea for your own game. Maybe I'll revolutionise the RPG genre. Either way, I'm glad I had this opportunity to share my thoughts with you and hope it will foster some constructive conversation. Have at it!
Tundra is now and has always been a labour of love, emphasis on the labour. The fact of the matter is that I'm really good at starting things and utterly suck at following through with them.
This topic is essentially going to be a repository for my system concepts and ideas, all the stuff I've thought of over the years and went "hey, that would be cool."
Why am I doing this? Well my girlfriend and I just started working on the game again after I was explaining some of my ideas and plot points to her, and she's really excited about it. This is a girl who has no love for RPGs whatsoever, so if she's excited I think I'm onto a winner, and I'd like some feedback on stuff I'm planning on putting into it. So without further ado, let's get started! (Please note that these are still just concepts. I don't think I'll be able to put everything into one game, much as I'd like to, and I'm aware that there is such a thing as too many features)
Your game, the way you want to play it
Something I've seen a lot, particularly in reviews, is players occasionally scoring lower than they otherwise would have because of a specific part of the game that wasn't quite as fun/entertaining/accessible as it could have been. I've always been interested in solutions to this, and I've seen some games that skirt on an elegant way of dealing with it, but I want to take it to a new level by making the game experience customisable.
What do I mean by this? Well basically, if you don't like battles you can turn the battle system off. If you think the encounter rate is too high, make it lower. Too low? Make it higher. Puzzle too hard? Disable puzzles. At the end of the day I'm making a game to tell a story; the systems and features are garnish. If you don't like a feature, I'd rather you turn it off and continue to experience the story than give up on my game. If anyone else has done customisation on this scale please let me know how it worked out for you. Either way feel free to offer your thoughts.
NPCs that live
Too often an NPC in a game is a coloured brick that repeats the same message ad nauseum every time you press enter next to it. It might as well be a signpost with legs. Sometimes NPCs change their dialogue after major story events, but this can sometimes backfire when you forget to update them and they're still talking about their town being destroyed after it's been rebuilt. Even commercial RPGs tend not to put a huge amount of effort into their NPCs.
What I want (if it's even possible; I've done some tests in the past that suggest it is, but it would be a ton of work) is for my NPCs to almost be PCs in their own right. I want them to have names, backstories, movement patterns, schedules, conflicts, arguments, relationships...blah blah blah etc. etc.
In practice this would still obviously need to be scripted, but I've always wanted my world to actually feel like it's alive, down to the random insignificant people who populate it.
Probably a huge pipe dream because if it could be done someone would likely have done it already, but the good thing about concepts is I don't have to be bound by reality. :) Thoughts and comments welcome.
Battles you have to think about
A few people have already heard about my battle system concept, so I'll keep this one short and sweet. Essentially it's like Vagrant Story in a turn-based environment. Enemies will have targetable "parts" dependent on their species (so humanoids will have a head, torso, two arms and two legs, spiders will have a body and eight legs etc), which have a percentage of the enemy's base HP and are tied to one or more statistics/abilities. When a part is damaged linked stats will decrease, and if "killed" the enemy will lose the linked abilities (playing with the idea of having killed parts auto-revive after X turns to keep it interesting)
This opens up a number of interesting possibilities, like a warrior enemy who deals devastating physical attacks, so you should focus on his arms to reduce his damage output and then take him down. Note that whatever part you attack the base HP still goes down so it's never a waste of a turn to go after a particular part. I'm currently working on a StarCraft-esque "wireframe" overlay to show body parts and their status.
This is probably the most ambitious system I've ever devised and also ironically enough the one I've made the most progress with, but criticism, comments and suggestions are as always welcome.
A magic system that puts you in control
Tying in with my "the player makes the game, I provide the story" ethos, the two magic users in my game won't have a static list of spells they can learn. Rather, they will have a number of slots (which increases as they level) into which the player can assign their own spells using runes (which has a logical in-game explanation as well) which determine the effect of the spell, how powerful it is, and how much MP it costs. So you can have a huge array of really powerful spells that'll drain your MP in a couple of turns, or a variety of small and useful utility spells, or a mixture. It's really up to you.
At the moment, the plan is for there to be a rune assignment for targeting (one enemy, all enemies etc), element (fire, ice, etc), damage (light, medium, heavy), and additional effect (could be anything from a damage multiplier to inflicting a status ailment). Not only will the spells have their costs determined by the combination of runes, but I'll use a clever little system of affixes and suffixes I came up with to give them all their own names too, which will hopefully keep things fresh.
And again in tandem with my goal of giving the player more control, you can opt to just have your spells decided for you instead of using the crafting system.
------
That's about all I can think of that I wanted to share so far. Maybe I've been wasting my time for over a decade and these are all the worst ideas ever. Maybe I'll inspire you with an idea for your own game. Maybe I'll revolutionise the RPG genre. Either way, I'm glad I had this opportunity to share my thoughts with you and hope it will foster some constructive conversation. Have at it!
I can understand what you are doing I'm giving every npc a pic with a name of some sort. And I will come back to fix my grammer I have been creating a crafting system becuase well personally, I love crafting in games. Also you could do this I have a place that starts out as land and upgrades to level 8 at the moment. I will prob do this for one other area in the game. You have a great point players love options and like to be able to choose what they want to do in game, the more content the more play value.
Everyone plays at a diffrent scale/way. I personally will make a hidden boss harder then the final boss. Mini games are importent also, those are pretty much filler. Granted when I think of gaming I want get the attention of more then one type of crowd. So I think where your going is a great idea.
Everyone plays at a diffrent scale/way. I personally will make a hidden boss harder then the final boss. Mini games are importent also, those are pretty much filler. Granted when I think of gaming I want get the attention of more then one type of crowd. So I think where your going is a great idea.
Please make it so that people can change their walk speed. Some people like to move fast, others don't mind normal. (My pinky is sore from holding down shift :< )
*
I like the idea of the spell craft. It sounds a lot like what I've got planned for one of my games (got part of the idea from Wild ARMs, where you mixed two elements to get a spell. In WA there were four elements, allowing up to 16 spells. I'm actually making the elements themselves add the effects - so wind would add more than one target and fire increased damage output. Of course, there's a limit to how many spells you can create over all, but with limited spell capacity you have to choose between the really powerful fire spell or a slight damage ice spell that can put all enemies to sleep.)
It's a neat idea.
*
NPCs will take a lot of work, but one way to make it seem more 'real' is to add people in dungeons as well as towns. All too often you find only the heroes in the dungeons, which make them a bit separate from the rest of the world, especially when it's a track through a forest/mountain/etc that is the only way to get from one place to another.
Sometimes it's also not finding people, or at least finding traces of past generations. Maybe there used to be a town in the middle of the forest, when it used to be farmlands, but a drought made them relocate and in later years - after the drought broke - the once beaten-back forest has reclaimed the land, leaving a ruined village in its midst. This not only makes the forest seem more menacing, but adds a history to the place and ages the world just that little bit more - as though it didn't just pop into being the moment the hero woke up in bed.
History can be just as important as the present and it doesn't have to exist just in books and dialogue. ^.^
*
I like the idea of the spell craft. It sounds a lot like what I've got planned for one of my games (got part of the idea from Wild ARMs, where you mixed two elements to get a spell. In WA there were four elements, allowing up to 16 spells. I'm actually making the elements themselves add the effects - so wind would add more than one target and fire increased damage output. Of course, there's a limit to how many spells you can create over all, but with limited spell capacity you have to choose between the really powerful fire spell or a slight damage ice spell that can put all enemies to sleep.)
It's a neat idea.
*
NPCs will take a lot of work, but one way to make it seem more 'real' is to add people in dungeons as well as towns. All too often you find only the heroes in the dungeons, which make them a bit separate from the rest of the world, especially when it's a track through a forest/mountain/etc that is the only way to get from one place to another.
Sometimes it's also not finding people, or at least finding traces of past generations. Maybe there used to be a town in the middle of the forest, when it used to be farmlands, but a drought made them relocate and in later years - after the drought broke - the once beaten-back forest has reclaimed the land, leaving a ruined village in its midst. This not only makes the forest seem more menacing, but adds a history to the place and ages the world just that little bit more - as though it didn't just pop into being the moment the hero woke up in bed.
History can be just as important as the present and it doesn't have to exist just in books and dialogue. ^.^
Don't worry about the walk speed thing; I think the same thing and will likely have a speed shift mechanic (though rather than being slow by default and having a key to move fast, I'll either make it a menu option or make it fast by default and have a key for going slow, which I'd work into a couple of puzzles so it has a use)
Already with you on the people in dungeons thing as well; my idea was to have a group of...not so much rival heroes, but another little party doing their own thing that you would run into occasionally and trade chat/insults/duels with. And you'd hear about their exploits sometimes too after they do something really impressive.
I like your idea on traces of past generations. I can certainly look into having some ruined towns, maybe an artefact or two. My world history for Tundra is actually pretty neat if I say so myself, so I'll definitely try to make it matter in the present too.
Thanks for your comments guys!
Already with you on the people in dungeons thing as well; my idea was to have a group of...not so much rival heroes, but another little party doing their own thing that you would run into occasionally and trade chat/insults/duels with. And you'd hear about their exploits sometimes too after they do something really impressive.
I like your idea on traces of past generations. I can certainly look into having some ruined towns, maybe an artefact or two. My world history for Tundra is actually pretty neat if I say so myself, so I'll definitely try to make it matter in the present too.
Thanks for your comments guys!
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Reality check: If your girlfriend has no love for RPGs and is into working on this with you, it has nothing to do with the game. She just wants to spend time with you.
I don't know that I've ever seen targettable body parts done well in an RPG. Well, I've seen it done well in specific fights, but never when used for every enemy across a whole game. Props if you can make it an interesting tactical choice instead of just the equivalent of an elemental weakness (with "leg shot" and "arm shot" and "head shot" basically being elements, except that every skill can be cast as any element so even the minimal depth of skill choice you'd find in a simple Dragon Quest elemental system is removed). I think the best plan would probably be to take the method used in games where specific boss battles have multiple body parts, and just make every enemy in the game that complex - so each part gives the enemy certain attacks, and killing it will often have special secondary effects, and the parts get constantly revived, and some enemies require you to destroy all of their body parts while others die after a specific piece is defeated.
Honestly if you've been working on your game for over a decade, you don't need new ideas, though. You're about six years past the point of being able to do any major revisions, I'd assume. Get it working and done, then if there are problems, fix them afterwards (following the footsteps of giants, like EA and Blizzard).
I don't know that I've ever seen targettable body parts done well in an RPG. Well, I've seen it done well in specific fights, but never when used for every enemy across a whole game. Props if you can make it an interesting tactical choice instead of just the equivalent of an elemental weakness (with "leg shot" and "arm shot" and "head shot" basically being elements, except that every skill can be cast as any element so even the minimal depth of skill choice you'd find in a simple Dragon Quest elemental system is removed). I think the best plan would probably be to take the method used in games where specific boss battles have multiple body parts, and just make every enemy in the game that complex - so each part gives the enemy certain attacks, and killing it will often have special secondary effects, and the parts get constantly revived, and some enemies require you to destroy all of their body parts while others die after a specific piece is defeated.
Honestly if you've been working on your game for over a decade, you don't need new ideas, though. You're about six years past the point of being able to do any major revisions, I'd assume. Get it working and done, then if there are problems, fix them afterwards (following the footsteps of giants, like EA and Blizzard).
Well the thing is, LockeZ, although my development cycle is twelve years, I have very little actually implemented and a shitload of stuff on paper, in text files, uploaded in various internet repositories etc. so really it's still all fluid and new ideas are always welcome.
It's only recently that Kytt's started getting into the idea, and she's a lot better with organisation than me so she's exactly what I need. I've accomplished more in one night with her taking notes than I have in the past couple of years by myself.
Your suggestion for the battle system is more or less what I'd intended anyway, to an extent. I won't know how well it works until I finish coding it, but I'll be putting out a tech demo anyway. I'd be especially interested in your thoughts when I have a tangible product since I respect your systems expertise above pretty much anyone else.
It's only recently that Kytt's started getting into the idea, and she's a lot better with organisation than me so she's exactly what I need. I've accomplished more in one night with her taking notes than I have in the past couple of years by myself.
Your suggestion for the battle system is more or less what I'd intended anyway, to an extent. I won't know how well it works until I finish coding it, but I'll be putting out a tech demo anyway. I'd be especially interested in your thoughts when I have a tangible product since I respect your systems expertise above pretty much anyone else.
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