Two things to talk about today, and it entails good news and bad news.

1. Demo ready to release, tester needed
2. My haitus


Demo ready to release, tester needed

It's been a long time, hasn't it?

This project started quite some time back. It's been remade... two times? Maybe three? I'm beginning to lose count. This project has spent more time at the drawing board than the production line, but I'm finally at a point where I can say I'm legitimately proud of @JRL's current progress.

And that's why I'm happy to announce that a demo is almost ready for release.

It's about thirty minutes long to roughly an hour, and I feel it sets the pace for what to expect in @JRL. What started as a roguelike experiment product has turned into a traditional RPG with a heavy focus on narrative development. Of course this demo won't contain all of the characters and their stories, but it will give you some background into a couple of them. The bulk of the game will be post apocalyptic, but the majority of this demo takes place pre-apocalypse. I put a lot of work into making it a solid experience, and I hope you'll enjoy it.

The story and its presentation are rather unique. I can't really put it into words, but you'll see how the story weaves together comedy and tragedy in a unique manner. You the character will experience the world through the lens of the main characters, and the mood of the world around you may change because of that, depending on the perspective of the main character you are controlling. I have no idea if I pulled this off well, or if it's simply confusing. That'll be up to you all to decide.

Expect a strange experience.

That being said, I need one person willing to test play the current demo. It's in a position where it's almost ready to release, but @JRL is a deceptively complex game. That's why I could really use a second set of eyes to give it a once-over before release.


My haitus

Now for the bad news. I'm afraid I won't be able to spend any more time on this project, outside of tweaking this demo. I'm not cancelling any of my games, and to put "haitus" on all of my projects would be unnecessary. Rather, I the developer am going on haitus.

Things changed in my personal life and I just don't have time for this hobby anymore. And that's really too bad. I love game development. I love making pixel art for it. Unfortunately, things changed and I no longer have time to commit to this hobby.

So I'll be going on an indefinite haitus. Who knows how long? I've decided to tie up a few lose ends here on RMN, and I feel @JRL is a big part of that. @JRL has become my personal flagship game, and I can't leave it as is. I have to release something for it.

After all the work I put into @JRL for you guys, I feel I've finally gotten to the point where I can release a demo. It won't be perfect. There'll be a few bugs, and some artwork I just haven't gotten around to making just yet. But I want there to be a playable demo I leave here for you guys. I want there to be something you all can enjoy, because all of you have been so faithful to this project, in your inspiration and encouragement, and you all have been earnestly awaiting a release of some sort. The most I can give right now is a demo.

@JRL is not cancelled, but think of it as being on an indefinite haitus. Will it be finished some day? I hope so, after I get my affairs in order. Perhaps I'll get a nice long vacation to put some work into @JRL. There's no telling when I'll be able to work on it again, but I can at least leave you all with something you may, or may not, enjoy.

Joanna, the lady of the hour herself.


To toss or not to toss?

So here we are, at the end of December 2016, and @JRL's development has all but halted. Since making this game page, I've produced, completed and released several other games. I've learned a lot of lessons in that time. I've given @JRL a graphical overhaul once already, and I've definitely improved as an artist and am more than willing to give it another big overhaul.

But the question is this: is @JRL worth keeping?


My initial vision for @JRL

My initial vision for @JRL, and the reason I made this game, was to create a game that handled a bit like a Roguelike, offering a new experience for the player each time they played it, with a bunch of ways to interact with the environment. I figured out a good bit of randomization for items and whatnot, and it was "good enough" for a non-scripted system. The maps were all the same, but the items would change, and the scenarios would be different each time you played. The NPCs all had different personalities, and would wear different gear, and you could interact, trade and fight them at will.

The context menu was a big edition which really helped to open things up: every item was interactive!

It was a lot to take on, and I could handle quite a bit of it. However, there's a big problem.


Why @JRL isn't going anywhere

Even after my first overhaul, there was a big problem with @JRL, and it's the sole reason why production has not continued. Simply put, it wasn't fun. Not to me, at least.

It wasn't that I couldn't pull off these things: my Halloween Board Game shows that I can pull of randomization and multiple scenarios, each with different items, obstacles, encounters, and so on.

I did it here in @JRL too, but I didn't enjoy playing it. And that, to me, was a big indicator that YOU wouldn't enjoy playing it, either.

1. The context menu problem

The context menu seemed nifty, but it changed from being a "let's find ways to interact with things", to simply, "let's check this thing for items, then break it, then use the shovel to gather the rubble". Not only could all of these be condensed into a straight forward event, but the point of the game wasn't to run around with rubble bulging out of your pockets.

The crafting that this lead into was pretty cool. I did enjoy that, and I had some ideas that I believe I'll use in future projects. For example, it's possible for Joanna to stumble into some cyborg technology, install it into her actual body, and craft different improvements for her using the crafting system. Like I said, cool stuff, but the means to get there simply wasn't fun. Perhaps I'm wrong and people would really dig the gather and crafting system, but the overall gameplay wasn't supposed to simply be this lather-rinse-repeat system.

2. The battle problem

I can make a far better battle system now, but the one I had in place just wasn't that good. There were some neat ideas: you could dive behind cover in combat and increase your evasion. The enemy could grapple you, limiting your melee attack, and you had an option to try and fight through or try and break the grapple. The injury could cut you with a sharp object, and you could spend a turn to patch up the wound.

You may think that's a lot of fun. When it worked, it worked. However, the randomness of the design resulted in Joanna getting completely destroyed all the time. An NPC in one time could be a push-over. Joanna may find a 4x4 and crack them open, no problem. In the next play through, Joanna may only run around with a stick of gum, and run into an enemy that's dual wielding Colts 45s and completely blows her away. Sure, a lot of roguelikes will introduce the player to brutal difficulty like that, but that wasn't something I found enjoyable.

3. The scenario problem

These were awful to program. I bit off a bit more than I could chew. There was, simply, too much going on. Because of the randomness of the scenarios, the game lacked appropriate pacing. In one scenario, the town would be infested with zombies. In the next, it could be crawling with burglars. In the next, robots could be patrolling the streets, neutralizing everyone it sees. Again, seemed cool in concept, but it was far too big and disruptive to the pacing of the game. "This kills the game."

4. Joanna was never fully realized

The randomness killed Joanna's personality. Joanna, to me, was a great character I really, really liked. She was rough, she was neurotic, she had unhealthy habits. She had a lot of problems, but boy did she toughen up and pull through. She was, to put it simply, cool. However, the create-a-character really seemed to mess with this. You could choose to play as Joanna, or choose to make another character.

The end result, however, was that the player character had no personality, in order to create a blank slate that players can relate to. This means that Joanna went from being a rough and tumble hero, to a mute with no personality aside from what the player gave it. Yeah, you could choose the character's profession to a small degree, and it did affect the story in a minor way, but did you really need to? Was it important to shift Joanna from a mechanic to a retail worker? Did it truly add to the game? Sure, for player choice, it's great: but it lacks direction for a fully realized character. Because of so many different scenarios, Joanna would forever be directionless, lacking development.


What was good

@JRL wasn't a barrel full of suck. It had its good things. I enjoyed breaking and scavenging. I liked being able to find NPCs that are all diverse. I enjoyed running around and dodging zombies in the city streets. The crafting system was simple yet really fun, to me. I think there's some good things here, and it's not a lost cause. In fact, I think that there's potential for a game all of you will enjoy. But while there is potential for a lot of fun, there's a lot of other things that stand in the way between the player and that fun. I feel all of the extra stuff that detracts from that fun needs to be cleared out.


The way forward

So now the question is, which way do I go forward? There's a couple options.

1. Scrap it
Basically I can just scrap it, call it a loss, change the status to Cancelled, and eventually remove the game page. I can save my talents for other projects, and live to tell Joanna's tale another day, in another manner.

2. Remake it into more of a not-so-roguelike Dungeon Crawler
I can go forward and remake it once again. The graphics will look FAR better, and I will be able to take a fresh look at the game from its bare minimum state. I can make it a bit of a dungeon crawler (perhaps Joanna is the main character and she has random party members?) and go from there. Instead of being more in the vein of a roguelike where random stuff occurs, the world itself will be a bit of a dungeon crawler, both the town and its other areas. Maybe I could even change the name of the project to @JDC.


So what should I do? Leave your feedback below. Is there no hope for @JRL, or should @JRL become a dungeon crawler? Are you interested in seeing this become a modern Dungeon Crawler? Let me know!

Graphical Overhaul!

As part of my return to this project, I thought it was only appropriate to ditch the pseudo-ASCII, and instead, use 8-bit tiles for all of the graphics. Yeah. This is taking quite a while. The end result, however, I believe is far more attractive than the previous form. More images to come!


Wait, rebuilt from the ground up?

That's right. It's a whole new project now. After thumbing through pages and pages of events in JRL 1.0, I decided it was best to start fresh and begin re-working all of the coding. As a result, I have a much firmer grasp on what needs to be done, and due to the experience I gained since beginning this project, I am now more capable of putting together a functional game than before. My events are far more streamlined now than they once were.

What else is different?

The world generation itself, though using static maps, is now more fluent in the way of item customization. I am, however, still looking for a way which I can randomly spread out decorations throughout a map, perhaps using regions and eventing, though the means of which are still lost to me. Whether I find a solution or not, I'll still be able to mix things up a great deal more than before.

Also added, is character creation. It's brief, but it's there. You can either play the game as Joanna, the default character, or customize your own character.

Hope you're interested!

Concepts

Hidden here is a picture (rather large) of the concepts that will be implemented in JRL as I go through the early production. Take a look at it, and I'll explain some more afterwards.



The game is a pseudo-roguelike, which means it has the appearance of a Roguelike, yet lacks a major feature, such as random map generation. As a result, however, I can make very large, detailed maps with lots to do. This means I can add many different events onto one map (until I hit some limit).

The goal is to make it a different game every time to play it, even though the maps will be the same. This means a few things:

1. Plot
The plot will be different each time. This will be a lot of work! The goal is to have a plot with parts that are interchangeable, which means they flow in and out of each other easily. That's a challenge in and of itself! The second challenge of this, is that the plots will have to actually be interested! That means putting a lot of work into the plots to make them engaging. The goal right now is to have roughly 4 different outcomes each for 5 different major plot pieces, which are shuffled at random. The focus for the player will be on finding items, evading or battling enemies, and giving yourself a good chance to survive as they move around and advance the plot at their own pace.

On the flowchart you see in the hidden image, once the player goes through their simple character creation and accepts their decisions, the game then rolls a lot of die, deciding a plethora of variables. It determines plot, certain random events, whether certain areas are accessible, even the name of the neighborhood that they are in. There will be several common events used for this task to simplify design.

2. Items
Items have two different flavors of variety. First, depending on the variables acquired at the world creation, certain items will or will not appear. These are in the forms of *. There's nothing tying the plots to these, and while some may be significant, they are not game-breaking to warrant a player restarting until they get the desired item. The second variety is the insta-roll. That is, each box, locker or trunk that the player checks is handled by calling a common event that rolls the die and determines what they find. There are varieties of boxes and lockers, which means there will be different common events depending on the quality of box the player is searching. In one play through you may find some pieces of scrap laying around in boxes, while in others, you may find an empty bottle, or a battery lying around in a car trunk that can be used to power some electrical equipment.

3. Events
The goal is to make different events occur throughout the play-through. In one play-through, you may encounter a burning building which you cannot enter (well, you could, but you really shouldn't). In another, you'll run into some survivors you can rescue to get back to your base, or maybe there's an NPC that sells merchandise that wasn't there before. You could run into some raiders, looters, scavengers, policemen, firemen, people needing to be rescued and whatnot. This will be a lot of detail to implement, so it will take time. The first playable demo released may show just a handful of these things. Needless to say, the goal is to make the player's experience feel very different each time they enter the neighborhood. Some will be more pleasant than others, and some play-throughs, a violent, chaotic metropolis filled with rioters and raiders who won't hesitate to kill you and take your things.

4. Sidequests
Another goal is to place sidequests sporadically throughout the neighborhood. These NPCs will not be related to the main plot in any way and are completely optional. Most of the time they offer the player another option of content to play through, such as finding an item, rescuing them, or helping them out with something in the area. Some of the NPCs can even be added to the shelter. Again, completely optional.

5. Stats
The next big thing are stats. I understand that, with random item and generation, you may or may not find items which can progress your stats. The good thing is, the stats don't make an overly significant distinction. There are no levels in the game, so your starting stats will fluctuate a little, but not wildly such as in other RPGs. Because of the random aspect of items, the player is very much put in a scenario where they "play the hand they're dealt". Sometimes your characters may just not become very powerful in one play through, yet they could find an item that greatly raises their melee damage, or a skill/action that allows them to more easily flee from unwanted combat.

6. Areas
While the maps may be the same, some smaller areas may not be accessible during each play through. This allows the player to experience different content. In one play through, there may be a sewer you can access, and attempt to find items or NPCs there. In another play through, there may be a cavern you can enter that you couldn't get to before. The player will not be able to access all locations in ever play through: it's to add to your content to enjoy as you play through the game more than once.

There's plenty of more to come, so stay tuned.