Dungeoneer

My project is still in it's early days. I have finished the major outline of events and have begun editing them. I broke up the game into the Main Quests and Side Quests (about 7 right now). The Main Quests are automatically received, progressing gameplay. The Side Quests are entirely optional but completing them will open up extra content, items, equipment and what-not.

Yes, there is a rat-killing quest. Yes, this is cliche. Why am I doing this? Because I have recently had a rat problem in my home and feel the need to virtually slaughter mass quantities of them. No, there is no slime killing quest. Unless of course, I have an infestation of slimes in my apartment. I highly doubt that happening though.

I plan on keeping the game short though I won't take a guess as to what play-time will be with this content. Here is my concept of the game world and how areas will hook up to each other. The little purple circles are Warps which allow the characters to travel to different areas more quickly. I'll probably put one in before the final boss as well.

On a side note, I want to set this game in Arum though I'll have to toy with the idea some more and see if it would work with my plot. Welcome to Dungeoneer.

Today (and yesterday if I'm going to be honest), I sat down and just thought about WHO the characters in Dungeoneer are; how they act, talk and function as people. Here is some of the things I wrote down about Hellene, the heroine of the story, who is trying to return an amulet she stole off of a dead body.

Hellene
An explorer who's 6th sense for adventure gets her into trouble more often than not.
Her odd set of morals sometimes conflicts with those around her and her honesty and openness for those morals often causes problems for her.
She enjoys reading romance novels but is loath for others to find this out because she thinks they are silly.
Her favorite colors are red and purple and she loves boots and jewelry.
Though she says she has no purpose in the town of Mistle and that she merely follows her nose, looking for adventure, she is actually searching for her lover, who disappeared a few years ago when a spell went horribly awry.
She is afraid of magic and though she does not see it as either evil or good, she firmly believes it isn't something to be meddled with.
Oddly enough, she isn't actually afraid of the undead, such as Irene (who is a ghost). She feels pity for them and the few times she has come across them, she has put them out of their misery.
Though she makes it sound like Irene is a huge pain, she really wants to help her move on to the next world.
She does not believe in stealing from those that cannot afford to lose and will rarely steal from humans. However, since the dead no longer need their worldly possessions, she has no qualms about looting the dead.
She believes it is sinful to lie though it isn't lying to refrain from sharing information if not asked for it.

Making lists like these has always helped me when writing short stories. I believe that it's still important, as the creator of that character, to know those little things (like a secret love of cheesy romance novels), even if most of what I write down doesn't come up in the story. It still shapes the person and their actions.

Today, I wrote down what enemies are going to show up where and thought a bit about the roles of those enemies in combat. Here's one enemy that I got some decent planning done on:

Rat: A fast, small creature with a nasty bite.
Base Stats
HP 65 AGI 8
MP 6 LCK 8
ATK 7 MAT 6
DEF 7 MDF 7
Exp ?? G ??
Item1 ?? Item2 ??

Skills Bite – longer delay than normal attack.
Steal ??

From the above information I derive that it has high evasion and speed so the characters aren't going to hit is as often. It doesn't have awesome attack or defense but it will attack more often because of its speed. And it can sacrifice that speed boost for a higher damage dealing attack IF it has the MP to spare (of course he's got more than enough to spare).

Today, I decided on what skills each character has. There are three playable characters in the game and they each have a specific purpose in battle.

Hellene is your main-stream, fast action attacker. Her default damage is decent and she attacks fairly often. Her skills allow her to attack multiple times or with stronger power but delay her actions a bit. A fair trade-off. She can also steal items which I have always loved to do in games.

Irene is the buffer and de-buffer. She'll power up the characters and power down the enemies. She has good defense but terrible attack power so there isn't any reason why the player shouldn't make use of her skills.

Barrett is a mage. He does magical damage and heals depending on the situation. No, his skills aren't named Fire I, II and III. More along the lines of Magic Bolt and Chain Lightning (a shout-out to the wonderful Heroes of Might and Magic games).

There's still a lot of tinkering I have to do with the skills (less tinkering and more playtesting to see how the work in battle and if they need to be revised or even removed).

I've been working on a short introduction. I don't like long opening cutscenes unless they are cinematic and pretty (which is a bit beyond my game making power). So, yes, just a bit of writing, nothing I can share though.

I've also been thinking about Irene and how she died, who she was. Not a whole lot of it comes up in the game and Irene isn't even her real name, just what she calls herself. Being a ghost has made her forget a whole lot.

I'm definitely setting this in the world of Arum. So Barrett's magic is something I'm going to have to account for. Not much else to report. Mostly just branstorming and writing (too much freaking work to get anything else done).

I've sat down and made a map out of the rtp (which I think is pretty). It's the first dungeon; the pub cellar, which is sadly infested with rats. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

I also wrote some more, not a lot, but a bit more and did some other mapping but nothing that can be shown just yet. Wow, this was a short post (but a picture is worth 1000 words right?).

Edited the pub cellar with help from the feedback I got.

I also wrote. I fleshed out some back-story for Irene, the ghost that Hellene ticks off by stealing an amulet. I don't know how much will actually go into the story but it's still useful.

When I got tired of writing a little while ago I started tinkering with items. Percentage effects all the way baby. Instead of “Potion X” healing 500 HP, it will instead heal 50% or some other such percentage. This way, there are not a lot of useless items that heal 20 HP when a character has 500 HP.

Taking this same stance to rid myself of useless things in the game, I am designing skills this way too. For instance, Hellene can upgrade her skill “Steal” (which obviously steals something from the enemy) to “Mug”. “Mug” will not only try to steal an item but will also do some damage to the target. It will cost more MP (or whatever I end up calling it) but by the time it gets an upgrade, Hellene should have plenty of extra MP to spend.

This means a smaller range of skills to choose from but really, only a few skills end up being truly useful in a game most of the time anyways.

I've done mapping and experimenting with different resources to see if I can get a style that would make use of the mack sprites (that I so dearly love) and some of the RTP (which I think is cute and pretty and other good stuff).

I was made aware of some lovely trees made by Soruve (thanks for the heads up SorceressKrysty!) and found some old XP edited trees that would be more suitably sized for the sprites. So here I have two pictures, one indoors and one outdoors. I'd love feedback and would be extremely grateful for it, as always.

Not too much to say. Been working a lot the past few days so not much got done. I have a rough plan for the town so I'm starting to map that but I'm not getting far because I haven't decided for sure if I'm going straight rtp and chibi sprites or if I'm going to make/find some tiles to use with the pretty mack sprites that I have.

In other news, I wrote about Irene some more. I should probably show Barrett some love and write him some interesting back-story and what-not too.

Alrighty. I'm going strait RTP/RTP edits on this game (so no beautiful mack sprites for me). I've done some mapping, mostly town and interiors.

I've also been database-ing my ass off. I got the skills done except for obvious tweaking and one skill which I'll have to figure out how to event. I want to play with some ideas on how to do it before asking for assistance.

I also did some stat work for characters and the rat enemy. I'm thinking that equipment will play more of a “protect from x or y element/status effect” and do minimal stat boosts. This will make it easier to balance battles in the long run I believe.

Also, I'm using the Ao No Kiseki battle system (which is super cool btw). I think it's really fun to play with, both as a player and as a game developer. Here's a screenshot of it in use.

Not much is getting done today unless I have time later this evening. Mostly just derping around with enemies and perhaps laying out a foundation for the 2nd dungeon, a forest. What's that? How original? Bah humbug to you naysayer.

Silliness aside, I've got the pub cellar mostly finished. Just have to lay down a few more events and it will be fully playable. After that it's just tweaking and tile editing to get the look that I want for it. The rats are fairly balanced I believe, for a level 1 character that is.

I wrote a bit of the tutorials for the 1st dungeon as well, since it essentially introduces the player to combat and exploration. That's about it.