I am thinking about maybe making a tactical combat focused but story driven crpg with a modern Windows/Linux GUI and maybe some kind of hex chessboard for combat positioning but with a 'viewport' filled with walls of adjustable-verbosity text instead of graphics. I'd be targeting some blend of a BG2 or ToEE-like combat experience but more PnP since it would rely on imagination for the visuals instead of textured polygons.
Someone might ask why not just use Unity or other middleware, but my concern is all of the extra work involved in making the actual sprites or 3D models and anyway I could always combine a graphics viewport with the text viewport at some point in the future if things got that far. This would be a 'just for fun' project, but who knows where it could lead in the future.
>About 30 meters down the torch lit passage you see a large bipedal lizard with yellow freckled scales and black tiger stripes balancing on its three toed feet with a heavy, meaty tail sweeping around behind it as it investigates something on the ground. It hasn't noticed you yet but it seems to be tasting the air with its long forked crimson tongue flicking in and out like a snake. You can see that its teeth are large and very white with prominent fangs. Could its bright colors indicate that it is venomous?
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1) Get me out of here!
2) Approach the creature and see if it speaks Common and maybe offer it a barbecued rat-on-a-stick.
3) Ready your melee weapon and try to stick to the shadows and creep quietly for a closer look.
4) Charge and attack in melee combat.
5) Attack with a ranged weapon.
6) Prepare a spell.
7) Other [specify].
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For the combat itself I would just show a list of dice rolls and the results in terms of hit/miss, damage, armor mitigation etc each turn. It could be single character or party based and you could change combat strategies at any point by changing weapons or spells or positioning etc.
I would also try to create text-based descriptions of the combat itself. Maybe each battle could even get its own flavor from this. I am interested in trying to increase the complexity of crpg combat and perhaps not having to include a unique animation for each effect would help with this. For instance I am thinking of a lookup table for different special status effects that could change the effectiveness of the combat for one side or another depending on the creature and the character class and the weapons used.
Anyway my question is would you want to play a game like this if you found the story sufficiently compelling or is at least primitive KoTC level graphics basically a requirement for a game that you could actually play?
Someone might ask why not just use Unity or other middleware, but my concern is all of the extra work involved in making the actual sprites or 3D models and anyway I could always combine a graphics viewport with the text viewport at some point in the future if things got that far. This would be a 'just for fun' project, but who knows where it could lead in the future.
>About 30 meters down the torch lit passage you see a large bipedal lizard with yellow freckled scales and black tiger stripes balancing on its three toed feet with a heavy, meaty tail sweeping around behind it as it investigates something on the ground. It hasn't noticed you yet but it seems to be tasting the air with its long forked crimson tongue flicking in and out like a snake. You can see that its teeth are large and very white with prominent fangs. Could its bright colors indicate that it is venomous?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Get me out of here!
2) Approach the creature and see if it speaks Common and maybe offer it a barbecued rat-on-a-stick.
3) Ready your melee weapon and try to stick to the shadows and creep quietly for a closer look.
4) Charge and attack in melee combat.
5) Attack with a ranged weapon.
6) Prepare a spell.
7) Other [specify].
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For the combat itself I would just show a list of dice rolls and the results in terms of hit/miss, damage, armor mitigation etc each turn. It could be single character or party based and you could change combat strategies at any point by changing weapons or spells or positioning etc.
I would also try to create text-based descriptions of the combat itself. Maybe each battle could even get its own flavor from this. I am interested in trying to increase the complexity of crpg combat and perhaps not having to include a unique animation for each effect would help with this. For instance I am thinking of a lookup table for different special status effects that could change the effectiveness of the combat for one side or another depending on the creature and the character class and the weapons used.
Anyway my question is would you want to play a game like this if you found the story sufficiently compelling or is at least primitive KoTC level graphics basically a requirement for a game that you could actually play?
