Jousting

Alright so last Thursday I sat around my usual self thinking "man I'd love to make a game but I suck so badly" or something similar. I was probably complaining about it on IRC as I am want to do occasionally.

Then in my irc logs this happened:


I actually don't remember what sparked that exclamation. If I look around the log there's nothing that would spark that at all. However I do remember remembering some old Warhammer Fantasy rules for jousting that were included in an old White Dwarf (back in about 1996 when fifth edition came out with the Bretonnian army book) Of course that White Dwarf is in a storage box somewhere at my mom's but a quick googling gave me the rules and I was on the path of making a game. Or at least making a gamepage for makerscore.

You see my real drive in this was frankly the fact that my lockerspace have run out. In order to get more lockerspace i have to make more game. Or actually make more makerscore.

But within 24 hours of that first "JOUSTING!" exclamation I had made a working prototype (which you can download). The game itself is very simple and very turn-based. The AI is nothing but the program rolling a die to see what it'll do and all actions are determined by rolling dice. In the background invisible of course.

But on this very basic foundation it's entirely possible to make a (somewhat) fun game. I made it so that adding to it would be very simple. Or I tried to anyway. My coding skills are pretty bad but it has worked out so far. Though today I had to replace quite a bit of code to make it more generic than it was before. And AGS's importing and exporting of functions is just stuff that I'm not sure I understand but I think maybe it has worked out now maybe perhaps.

But well stuff I hope or plan to include in this project then.
1. Being able to pick playable characters
This is what I'm working on now. Being able to do simple matchups on a screen just like in a beat'em up. Where every character has slightly different skill.
1.1 Different skillsets
Further into the future is a development of different knights in them having stuff like personalities and maybe even "very special skills" that mean they get bonuses only on very specific things. (using the original White Dwarf skills as a baseline. There were quite a few. Though how I'll deal with rerolls I have no idea yet.)
2. Multiple jousts
Right now a joust is a quick one-off affair but a game mode where you could try to beat as many opponents as possible before losing or being hunhorsed combined with a high-score table wouldn't be completely wrong.
2.1 Tournaments
And after multiple jousts then obviously there has to be a proper tournament with a price at the top!
3. Story mode
Yeah... What if there were cutscenes to go with the jousting. That'd be pretty sweet yeah?
3.1 Story mode with upgradables and experience points
And what if in storymode you could become a better character as you go through an epic struggle from a lowly barely-noble-knight-errant to a highly skilled and well-equipped jousting knight that never has seen real combat in his life!
4. Exciting graphics
It would be nice if the knights moved around a bit as they charged. And some actual action instead of a gigantic POW obscuring it all. I'll just have to take a lot of photos of my lego knights duking it out.

However. Don't expect any of this happening quickly. Usually I work on a project for about a week then get bored with it and go back to playing regular computer games for a while.

And after all. If you really look at it. This game (so far) is nothing that anyone couldn't whip up in visual basic in an hour or so...