Vapourware RPG project inspired by Realms of Arkania

[Curunír]

Hi there, Codex.

I am currently working on my own "little" RPG project mainly inspired by Realms of Arkania. I currently only have
a half-finished character generation and the basics of the dungeon engine including an automap feature. So nothing that could be called a game in any fashion. Nonetheless I am eager to get some feedback on the parts already done so far.

The "game" can be downloaded from:
http://dfiles.eu/files/0ajhbw64g
(Extract to some folder and execute the jar-file. The music so far has been shamelessly ripped from RoA.)

From the main menu screen a mouse click brings up the menu, where two points are of interest currently:

1. "Begin new game" throws you into a test dungeon (without any game-relevant parts yet) to showcase the
dungeon engine and the auto-map feature. Movement works by arrow keys or mouse clicks on the edges of the
viewport (cursor will change). Full automap can be brought up by clicking on the small automap in the upper right corner or pressing M. You can move the automap with the arrow keys and press spacebar to center on the current party position. Automap allows to set notes by clicking on an uncovered tile in the full automap view and to remove them by right-clicking a placed note. Escape key closes the automap window. When pressing escape in the test dungeon view you return to the main menu.

2. "Generate characters" shows the half-finished character generator. In the character generator escape or right click with mouse brings up a context menu. With left and right arrow keys (or buttons at the lower end of the screen) you can switch pages (after you have selected a class). On the talent page up and down arrows allow to switch the currently active talent group. With the tab key you can switch to another character, if you have created more than one.

Features of the character generator so far:
- Allows to generate up to six characters in parallel, so you can generate your entire party at once. (So you can for instance delay deciding on some talents of your first character until you have rolled your entire party...)
- 8 main attributes with unique dice roll / point buy hybrid method
and a score of various statistics derived from them.
- 13 implemented races
- 22 classes partially implemented (most still lack description and specializations)
- 12 deities with different gameplay benefits
- generates initial values for the 14 weapon talents and 63 other talents based on attributes, race and class,
and allows to increase them and specialize in them
- allows to pick from various positive and negative traits (list not complete yet, but all existing ones are with descriptions)
- the game will utilize an unique(?) point buy system where you are allotted a number of GP (generation points) for the entire party and you decide which character will use up many of them (thus being better) and which character will use less (thus being rather weak).

Still missing in character generation:
- In detail help for various character generation options.
- Most class specializations and descriptions.
- Some additional traits as well as stat updates for some already existing ones.
- Feats.
- Divine powers.
- Spells.
- Saving characters.
- (Maybe: biography text box)

Most of these tasks are primarily design tasks, i.e. deciding which kind of spells and feats will be in the game.

What kind of help I am looking for:
1. At least one decent pixel artist
2. Some decent MIDI composer


Screenshots:

Spoiler

Dungeon View

Automap

Character Generation

 

[Jaesun]

Do you have any images or possibly a youtube video of what you have done so far?

 

[Ranselknulf]

Is it grid type movement like in the wizardry series?

How do monsters display in combat?

I could play a game with this art style and enjoy it, but the mechanics and implementation is what would matter. Realms of Arkania sounds like an interesting game I've never played though.

 

[Curunír]

Is it grid type movement like in the wizardry series?

How do monsters display in combat?

I could play a game with this art style and enjoy it, but the mechanics and implementation is what would matter. Realms of Arkania sounds like an interesting game I've never played though.

Yes, it will have grid based movement for dungeons and towns. Overland movement is planned to work like in Realms of Arkania 1/2, i.e. by selecting a route on a overland map with events and random encounters thrown in along the routes.

Combat will take place on a separate combat map like Realms of Arkania or the Gold Box games, probably closer to the latter. In dungeons I plan to use the dungeon layout of the vicinity as basis for the combat map layout (converting 1 dungeon tile to 2x2 combat map tiles).

The mechanics so far are mostly inspired by the TDE (The Dark Eye) Pen and Paper RPG with some D&D and CRPG-specific elements thrown in. For skills (called talents here) I plan to use a mix of D&D-style point increase on level up and learning by doing like in Wizardry 8 or Morrowind. The overall skill is basically the product of the allotted knowledge points during level-ups and current training, which is between 0% and 150% and increases by use. Increasing knowledge during level-ups decreases training such that overall skill remains the same, but the resulting decrease in training makes further training of the talent easier again. So you must both spend points during level-ups and frequently use your talents, the knowledge component avoids that you can just grind your talents to maximum a la Morrowind, the training component avoids that you become good in a talent just by leveling up and prevents sudden changes in your skill from leveling up (again, spending knowledge points does not improve your skill immediately but only makes further training easier).

 

[Ranselknulf]

Cool, I'll try it out if you make any progress on this.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

What engine do you use for this? Is it a custom engine, or something publicly available?
I can do the music for you, but I didn't work with midi for quite some time. However, I learn fast, so you can leave all the worries to me.

 

[Curunír]

What engine do you use for this? Is it a custom engine, or something publicly available?
I can do the music for you, but I didn't work with midi for quite some time. However, I learn fast, so you can leave all the worries to me.

It is a very basic self-made raycaster using only Java's AWT. Currently it manages to combine the graphical beauty of 1993 with the hardware requirements of today, which stems from the fact that I cast a ray for every pixel of the viewport (instead of every pixel column as usual for raycasters) and it being a one-day hack. There surely is some room (and need) for optimization there, for instance not creating tons of Color objects for every render of the scene. However I am not striving for graphical finesse, indeed I want to aim for a game that looks and feels like released back in the early nineties. So I won't invest to much time in the graphics engine department and will stick with a simple raycaster (which is easy to implement in a modern language like Java, if you liberally waste the computational resources of modern computers).

Help on the music front would be much appreciated.

On a side note, the above engine screenshot looks relatively "realistic" (regarding such things as color palette etc.), but that stems from using real world photographs as textures. In the end I would rather have a graphical style more akin to RoA 1+2 or M&M 3-5 (though a bit less colorful than M&M perhaps), etc. But that depends on the pixel artist, if I manage to find someone.

Currently I am still working on laying out the basic character system, so I can finish the character generation first, which is quite extensive already and planned to be pretty detail-rich.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

What engine do you use for this? Is it a custom engine, or something publicly available?
I can do the music for you, but I didn't work with midi for quite some time. However, I learn fast, so you can leave all the worries to me.

It is a very basic self-made raycaster using only Java's AWT. Currently it manages to combine the graphical beauty of 1993 with the hardware requirements of today, which stems from the fact that I cast a ray for every pixel of the viewport (instead of every pixel column as usual for raycasters) and it being a one-day hack. There surely is some room (and need) for optimization there, for instance not creating tons of Color objects for every render of the scene. However I am not striving for graphical finesse, indeed I want to aim for a game that looks and feels like released back in the early nineties. So I won't invest to much time in the graphics engine department and will stick with a simple raycaster (which is easy to implement in a modern language like Java, if you liberally waste the computational resources of modern computers).

Help on the music front would be much appreciated.

On a side note, the above engine screenshot looks relatively "realistic" (regarding such things as color palette etc.), but that stems from using real world photographs as textures. In the end I would rather have a graphical style more akin to RoA 1+2 or M&M 3-5 (though a bit less colorful than M&M perhaps), etc. But that depends on the pixel artist, if I manage to find someone.

Currently I am still working on laying out the basic character system, so I can finish the character generation first, which is quite extensive already and planned to be pretty detail-rich.

Sounds good. I'm looking forward to see how the game will look and when you'll finish the optimizations/improvements.
I'm going to spend a few days listening to soundtracks of RoA series and other RPGs and deconstructing these tracks to find the right mood.
For now, I'll PM you some questions to avoid fucking shit up by going in a wrong direction.

 

[Curunír]

Sounds good. I'm looking forward to see how the game will look and when you'll finish the optimizations/improvements.
I'm going to spend a few days listening to soundtracks of RoA series and other RPGs and deconstructing these tracks to find the right mood.
For now, I'll PM you some questions to avoid fucking shit up by going in a wrong direction.

Well, the look will not change after optimizations, I plan to stick to the basic simple raycaster I have now. I only need to improve performance a bit, because currently it is a bit inefficient (I've noticed some delays during movement when entering the big room in the north for the first time, for instance.)

As this is a turnbased game with tile-based movement, super-smooth performance isn't that crucial, but I would like it to run decent on a bit older machines as well.

The future look of the game will mostly depend on some artist talent, I can't do graphics for shit.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Some early (and unfinished) music for the game to bump the thread.

Enjoy.

 

[Ninjerk]

That's some gud runnin' around killin' shit music

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

That's some gud runnin' around killin' shit music

Thanks, man. I only showed the sketches for this game to the entrusted group of codexers before I decided to post a track here.
Expected more of a 'lol why dont u just make an orchestral wubwub score'.

 

[vonAchdorf]

That's some gud runnin' around killin' shit music

Thanks, man. I only showed the sketches for this game to the entrusted group of codexers before I decided to post a track here.
Expected more of a 'lol why dont u just make an orchestral wubwub score'.

 

[Dorateen]

Had a look through the files, like what I've seen about this project so far.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

That's some gud runnin' around killin' shit music

Thanks, man. I only showed the sketches for this game to the entrusted group of codexers before I decided to post a track here.
Expected more of a 'lol why dont u just make an orchestral wubwub score'.

Yeah, I listened to RoA soundtrack before writing the music.
I hope you're not expecting me to mindlessly copy the style and go out of my way to create something 'exactly like this'.

 

[Ninjerk]

That's some gud runnin' around killin' shit music

Thanks, man. I only showed the sketches for this game to the entrusted group of codexers before I decided to post a track here.
Expected more of a 'lol why dont u just make an orchestral wubwub score'.

It's competent and appropriate for what the game looks to be. I especially like that it doesn't try to take over the player's attention.

Without know what the game plays like, I'm concerned about it being needlessly broken up by combat music, though. If the pacing is such that the song can play for a minute or two at a time without being interrupted, I think it will be just perfect.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

That's some gud runnin' around killin' shit music

Thanks, man. I only showed the sketches for this game to the entrusted group of codexers before I decided to post a track here.
Expected more of a 'lol why dont u just make an orchestral wubwub score'.

It's competent and appropriate for what the game looks to be. I especially like that it doesn't try to take over the player's attention.

Without know what the game plays like, I'm concerned about it being needlessly broken up by combat music, though. If the pacing is such that the song can play for a minute or two at a time without being interrupted, I think it will be just perfect.

I don't know how the pacing will be handled, but constant encounters are a big bitch for me in dungeon crawlers, especially if the atmosphere is good.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Yeah, I listened to RoA soundtrack before writing the music.
I hope you're not expecting me to mindlessly copy the style and go out of my way to create something 'exactly like this'.

No - I like of your music.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

This is the first 'full' track composed for the game.


If anyone's interested, I might share a few words on how these tracks were composed, and which games/composers influenced this music.

 

[Dorateen]

I get a sense of urgency from that track. Like keep moving, grabbing all the loot you that isn't nailed down, and slay any monsters who get in the way. Maybe it's the minor key arpeggios, but I thought parts were evocative of a castlevania/gauntlet type setting.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Castlevania? Pretty strange, since I have different style associated with it (rocky songs from Aria of Sorrow/Symphony of the Night).
Devil Summoner was a source of inspiration for the tomb track.

Spoiler

As for castle track, it was... Hitman. I'm not kidding. Dwarves and elves don't give a fuck about consequences when they shit on the royal carpet.

 

[Ninjerk]

That hospital theme sounds like a Shadowrun Returns/Dragonfall song. Not a big fan of those SMT tracks.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Bumptittybump.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Arrite, guys, I'm ditching the MIDI and moving on to using sample-based instruments instead of whatever MIDI has to offer. There are several reasons for this, one of the reasons is that General MIDI e-guitars suck cock and there are tons of other instruments I'd like to use. So now expect something closer to tracker modules in terms of sound.

As usual, sketch included.

 

[Krraloth]

But can you recreate the tone and atmosphere of the forest track without the midi?
Do remember I know nothing about music making