Another RPG Programming Project Thread

[Gan]

I like the real time separate battle screen idea. Cause when you think of it, what happens when you get in a fight IRL?
Environment fades out of your view and your main focus is your enemies.

[Connors]

It's really not so different from QOM that way. Another idea I've been thinking of is the ability to run away if you get in a fight you don't think you can win. This is intended to make it more interesting, particularly when you've tried to explore areas that you aren't prepared for yet. It could be fun and even rather hilarious at times. There'd be a genuine sense of danger when you're nearly dead and running back to safety. It's what makes Minecraft fun when you're starting out and can't fight off everything.

Of course if no one can shoot or anything until the battle screen opens again, this gets weird. Does it open even if you're spotted even at a distance? Or should we scrap the idea of a battle screen and make it all real-time? I don't know if we could still use that percentile system or if it would have to just be like Zelda games... But I kinda like the battle screen. It makes things easier to program. Hmmm.

When can you guys be available to do a group chat? Possibly voice chat?

[Zoo]

That's a brilliant puzzle.

Anyway, I should have inferred that he'd have a weapon. Still though, maybe he isn't strong enough to defeat said enemies yet.

In scenarios where monsters are chasing you, you can exit the battle screen by running (maybe) and the monsters would chase you out of the battle screen if they've seen you or something. We could make it work.

Leveling system!

I don't think you should just get experience for fighting. Sneaking up on an enemy then killing it should give more xp than just a head on fight, and sneaking past an enemy should count for a little bit, but not as much as killing it. Or, we could take it  Elder Scrolls style, where you get xp for certain aspects by doing different things (such as holding down your space bar with a brick for a few hours, coming back and having an acrobatics skill of OVER 9000!!!!!!!!!!!!) Or getting strength skill by killing things, or stealth/sneak skill by sneak attacking and what not.

[Connors]

Should we make the skills system that complicated? I'd rather focus on gameplay and puzzles. Tell you what. One way of running collaborations like this is that if you come up with an idea you want in the game, you have to work on implementing it.

If you think you can lay out the gamerules for the stats system you want to use, then by all means, do it. I personally think we should try to lay out the ideas for combat in a way that we can test them before having to program them in. If it's turn-based we can do it tabletop style and roll dice and do the math real quick. Or maybe it's easier to test with a mockup program in Silver Creator. But we've got to start trying things.

[Zoo]

I definitely want to stay away from making it turn based. I think we should try to figure out how to make the battle screens work. I think it would work nicely. Leveling doesn't need to be complicated, but I think there should at least be some level of control over what areas your character excels in. So I think maybe we should outline all the skills that would be easy to implement in a top down 2D environment.

I'll make a list of levelable skills.

Speed - how fast the character runs, not very complicated. Possibly call the stat agility and have it also relate to how fast they can attack. Maybe after this skill levels enough the character gets a new ability such as rolling to avoid attacks. A possible option for stats is allowing the player to choose one special ability for the stat they train the most on.

Stealth - Higher stealth means longer before an enemy notices you when you get a surprise attack battle screen. It also gives you a better probability of picking a lock on a chest or a door (lock picks could be a single use item that either breaks or opens a lock. With higher stealth, you'd have a greater chance of picking a lock, and a lower chance of breaking your lock pick.) A special ability for stealth would be temporary invisibility or something.

Strength - how much damage the player does in battle. Pretty self explanatory. A special ability for strength would be a special strong attack which the player uses and then has to recharge.

Magic - how much mana the player has for magic abilities. Leveling this up would let you use a summoning spell to summon NPCs to fight for you as a special ability. As an added bonus, every magic level your maximum mana goes up by one, and your type of NPC that you spawn gets a bit better. The NPCs wouldn't be OP, just a little help in battle. You might also get faster mana regeneration with this stat.

Vitality - how much health the player has. Choosing to level this up the most gives the player a quick heal ability, using mana to heal instantly instead of using potions or other healing items.

Defense - counter damage to oncoming attacks. For example, say the enemy has an attack of 7 and you have a defense of 2, the enemy's attack would deal 5 damage. To prevent this from being super OP and keeping weak enemies from doing any damage at all, defense can only limit an enemy's attack to 1/3 of its original strength. The ability for this stat would be magical shield that deflects enemy projectiles and defends against melee attacks.

The player would get one special ability for his player, based on what stat he has most leveled up. The ability will change to always match the skill you have the highest level on. That way it's not a permanent decision and it allows the player to test them all out if they wish. You get a few upgrade points each time you level up, which you can apply to these skills.

[Gan]

First thing first, we have to stay within the limits of our resources.

Silver's sprites are what we got. So if we think of an epic battle system, we gotta mock it up with Silver's sprites.

I'm all for real or turn based. But real might look clunky due to the nature of Silver's sprites. Of course we can add sword swipe, arrow or mage attack animations to make it more realistic.

[Zoo]

I think we could use his background sprites, but the fact is that the player sprite set is not from an overhead perspective and wouldn't work with real time combat in 4-8-360+ directions. I like the sprites but they just aren't usable for real time combat. That being said, the only ones that won't work are the humanoids. The monsters would work, I think. Just not the dwarves, elves, humans, orcs, goblins, etc. But I'm envisioning the battle scenes as if you were viewing them from a helicopter, whereas the players are all standing as if viewed from the same height as they are. So if you were to use them in a top down perspective, they'd look like everyone was laying down. So, I don't know what to do besides make new art assets. I think the real first step is finding software of some kind.

[Connors]

Software my ass. Sprite drawing software is easy to find. Use Pixen, it has an option to make an animation with preview. We don't want to re-make the sprites, though. It could still work with cheesy sprites if the game is fun! Sword swipe animations and arrows and stuff but with the static front-view Roguesoft style sprites, in a real time battle. Yeah it's a bit silly. That's sort of what makes it fun. Ever tried Silmar? It uses that style of graphics but movement is not locked to a grid which works pretty well.

As for stats, I don't want to balance that many of them. In the end we're aiming for game balance and that means making sure all stats work. And we'd have to let the player choose which stats to upgrade. I'm not experienced at setting up a system like that and I'm worried it would fall apart. Perhaps we should keep it to four.

Simplicity, my friend. Simplicity.

[Gan]

Ever play Castle Crashers?

It doesn't have to be straight up/down. It could be at an angle like looking down from a tree.

[Connors]

Nifty. And the wall collision box is around the characters' feet!

Meaning if you walk past a sprite your top half or so would be in front of it.

Meaning, it's more like a 45 degree angle now. Just a tiny bit awkward, but doable with our current resources.

[Zoo]

True. If you can narrow it down to 4 stats, that's fine. Those were just some ideas.

[Gan]

I can get started on the NAV System immediately.

[Zoo]

What are we making this in? SilverCreator?

[Gan]

Sprite Kit, Mac 10.9 apple game making API.

Apple released it at this year's WWDC. Making games with it is really easy.

Anywho, I was about to start the Nav system and was browsing Silver's Roguesoft resources and found out that Silver was experimenting with Charas sprites.
Here's one of them: http://cl.ly/image/06013a3E152B/Warrior.png

If these charas sprites are royalty free, we could use them because it seems that was Silver's next step.

[Zoo]

We could use them, but are we still allowed to sell the game, then? Because if we are, then I'm all for it. The sprites look great, and I can make them. Honestly, this would be ideal for me, to create characters for the script of the game knowing what they'll look like. I think Charas is pretty awesome. Good for making enemies, too.