A cyberpunk tactical RPG - Zion

[mondblut]

Some ignorant fools think that anime is just Sailormoon and Pokemon.

What we see for character sprites IS sailormoon and pokemon.

 

[Victor Pflug]

Ok, so I went back to the drawing board and tried a more realistic character sprite.

Better than before?

 

[Mefi]

:shock:

Impressive. Love the feel of the mockup too. edit: That gaslighting could be a very effective way to set the mood of the game when required.

 

[ghostdog]

Awesome.

 

[Silellak]

Awesome.

I was excited before - I can deal with silly little anime characters as long as the gameplay is solid - but that new artwork is fucking awesome, and takes it to a different level.

 

[felicity]

Why spend so much energy in useless sprite. I'm fine with unrealistically scaled sprite. Sprite are meant to be abstraction/representation of character anyway.

I hope your game don't have experience for individual characters. I'm tired of having to save the 'last kill' for this and that character in similar games when I could have defeated my opponent much sooner. There is no reason to use individual experience in a squad tactical game, as if the person who made the last kill did more than anyone else in the party. It should be replaced with party exp.

 

[Zeus]

doesn't "mesh with cyberpunk", nor with anything else a person with taste would ever consider touching.

Hah! As if Japanese art design has no place in Cyberpunk. Neuromancer starts out in Chiba City, Japan. In Shadowrun, the world economy is based on Nu-Yen. Bladerunner had noodle shops and origami. Johnny Menominc had wired up Geisha bodyguards and a major subplot involving key code pictures from an anime on television. Ghost in the Shell, ghost covered that. And as for The Matrix... Ever hear of a little thing called The Animatrix?

There's no point in going on. Page through a pen and paper Cyberpunk RPG sourcebook, or -- god forbid -- pick up actual novel and realize that Japanese culture has influenced Cyberpunk since the beginning. So, yeah.

Ok, so I went back to the drawing board and tried a more realistic character sprite.

Better than before?

Victor, I honestly like these better. But I'm a little worried about how long something with that look would take to draw. I'd rather you guys release a game with the original sprites than not release them at all for fear of offending all the cute-haters out there.

Just remember, Final Fantasy Tactics had cute sprites. It also had a seriously messed up story involving demonic butchers and gory massacres in churches.

 

[Victor Pflug]

Why spend so much energy in useless sprite.

Actually this sprite took me no more than a few hours, and much of that was testing different sizes. I've spent like a thousand hours on Zion already, a this test is a drop in the ocean.

 

[DaViLLaN]

New art looks 100000000 times better. Keep it up gentlemen.

 

[Victor Pflug]

Victor, I honestly like these better. But I'm a little worried about how long something with that look would take to draw. I'd rather you guys release a game with the original sprites than not release them at all for fear of offending all the cute-haters out there.

Just remember, Final Fantasy Tactics had cute sprites. It also had a seriously messed up story involving demonic butchers and gory massacres in churches.

Thanks Zeus, but actually this was slightly easier and faster to do than the anime style sprites anyway. I hated screwing around with thier eyes for hours on end to be perfectly honest. Those things are a bitch to get right, one pixel off and it looks like crap (Yes I know, anime always looks like crap and is gay, oh so very gay).

Although the new sprites will probably make the animation guy have a fit and his head will explode.
Speaking of which, that's one sprite animation I'll be doing myself for sure.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

RPG Codex saves the day once again!

Now you only need a name change. "Zion" strikes me as extremely unimaginative - and yes, it's because of The Matrix.

And are you SURE this is not Steampunk?

 

[thesheeep]

Although the new sprites will probably make the animation guy have a fit and his head will explode.

Isn't that the no2 death cause of artists, anyway?
Right after getting their head ripped off by a programmer because they couldn't follow simple technical orders?

 

[mondblut]

It looks much better now. The Kkkodeks saves the day, indeed! :D

 

[Victor Pflug]

RPG Codex saves the day once again!

Now you only need a name change. "Zion" strikes me as extremely unimaginative - and yes, it's because of The Matrix.

And are you SURE this is not Steampunk?

I believe Zion is basically just a working title at the moment.
I personally want to call it "In the Future, everything has Lasers."

Steampunk would involve steam powered mechano-men or something. There is no steam tech in Zion.

Incidentally the No.1 cause of death among arists is auto-erotic asphyxiation, but I ain't goin out like that.

 

[Solivagant]

Who do I have to kill to work on this project? Artwork is gorgeous, new character sprite is really great. Would love to help you guys out.

Edit: I've noticed you guys are looking for some programming assistance, but I didn't find an email address! I must apply!

Edit2: And then my blindness faded and I found the e-mail in the site. Contacting your main dude.

 

[bloodychill]

I forgot about Zion being the city in the Matrix. Ah well, it is just a working title after all, we'll see how things turn out.

Anyway, like I already told Victor, I really like the new sprite but I want to see it animated (well) before I commit to a new look. I'd rather see expressively animated stylistic sprites than stiffly animated realistic ones.

Someone asked about classes and skills, so I thought I'd give an example. One of the classes is the Pyromaniac, which is inherited from the Hacker class. Basically, the Pyromaniac specializes in... well, burning and exploding things. He can throw bombs and napalm around, use a flame thrower, use flashbangs, and uses solar energy panels to absorb energy to be used in a heat ray that makes enemies immediately run away (this ability was inspired by actual technology that the US government is developing).

 

[Barrow_Bug]

Incredible stuff guys, keep it. A question: are you guys about storytelling and characters too? It'd be great to see something that looks this good, also have interesting plots/pc's.

This looks far more interesting than AOD(to me)

 

[Suicidal]

How will your progress through the game? I've noticed you guys mentioned missions and side missions, so is it gonna be like FF Tactics or Front Mission or other jap strategy RPGs where you fight predefined hand-placed encounters in a specific order or will there be some freeform exploration involved?

Game looks good btw.

 

[Victor Pflug]

How will your progress through the game? I've noticed you guys mentioned missions and side missions, so is it gonna be like FF Tactics or Front Mission or other jap strategy RPGs where you fight predefined hand-placed encounters in a specific order or will there be some freeform exploration involved?

Game looks good btw.

We hope to incorporate as much exploration as is possible within the storyline, taking some side missions will affect later story missions to a degree and so on. But yes, progression through the main storyline will be through set battles. Many of the side missions will be much more involved than your average "Go and kill some bandits to save some farmer", but we'll have a fair share of those too.

 

[Solohk]

The new sprites look great. I hope you can pull it off. Either way, the game itself sounds awesome. I'd kill for some good tactical combat right now.

 

[SerratedBiz]

I'll always cheer for a good tactical game. If I could only wish for one thing, and it's something one of you said would be done so I'm just hoping you won't change it later, it would be for complete control over character growth and development. There is nothing more annoying for me in a 'character-centric' tactical game than having your classes taken for you, statistics and abilities predefined, being railroaded through the game.

Or at least have the option to recruit blank NPCs which you can turn into anything you want. And then let us play the stages with characters other than the required story ones. It's all about customization, homes.

Edit: I also find the new sprites to be much better and original than the previous Habbo Hotel ones. Also, will the game feature alien tentacle sex?

 

[Mefi]

Finally figured out where that new mockup would look kind of at home - Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series. Yeah, I know. Just seems to evoke that kind of feel for me.

 

[Damned Registrations]

That sprite looks amazing, if you can pull off the whole game like that it'll still look great 20 years from now. Good, original 2d art is timeless. I'm not so sure I'd rather see well animated caricatures over simply animated artworks either. The sprites from Ogre Battle: MotBQ look MUCH better than those in Tactics Ogre: LUCT, for example, even though the former have very simple animations for attacking and single frame animations for getting hit, iirc. Slightly different scale/setup between the two, but you get the idea.


\/ IMPORTANT \/
I heartily second the motion to eliminate individual xp. It screws up so many parts of gameplay, like making support characters easier/harder to level depending on balance, adding new characters/replacing existing ones being a hopeless waste of time, and having to balance around both players who will micromanage and milk every drop of xp out of every enemy by killing with the weakest characters and those who'll just let rambo go on ahead and muder everyone solo. Just work it in a simple way where you get an xp reward for each character at the end of the battle based on their level relative to the level of the enemy forces. All the characters will even up quickly while they see combat, no single character will become godly, and you won't be able to farm xp by beating the shit out of your own guys then healing them or other weird crap.

 

[Zeus]

Speaking of experience systems, I loved how Final Fantasy Tactics awarded you for each and every move you made in battle. Pop a potion, get some EXP. Swing a sword, get some EXP.

When enemies died they'd drop behind a magic crystal which anyone could open for a nice little bonus, but by that point, everyone had already gained a good deal of EXP along the way, and there was none of that, "Wait for the newbie to get the killing blow" business. And that way classes like Healers can go about the business of healing, without worrying about anything else.

Honestly, that system just always makes a lot more sense to me. People learn from situations, not just finishing blokes off.

Another nice thing about FFT is you saw a little "EXP +" message every time you did something. It's a little detail, but it felt rewarding.

 

[Victor Pflug]

I'll always cheer for a good tactical game. If I could only wish for one thing, and it's something one of you said would be done so I'm just hoping you won't change it later, it would be for complete control over character growth and development. There is nothing more annoying for me in a 'character-centric' tactical game than having your classes taken for you, statistics and abilities predefined, being railroaded through the game.

Or at least have the option to recruit blank NPCs which you can turn into anything you want. And then let us play the stages with characters other than the required story ones. It's all about customization, homes.

Edit: I also find the new sprites to be much better and original than the previous Habbo Hotel ones. Also, will the game feature alien tentacle sex?

You'll be able to pick and choose class tiers/classes at will. I'd like to have full costume changes as you change class, too early to confirm this though.

A multiplayer mode in which you can create a fully customised crew is in the works. Not sure about the full details of this, but it's something we plan to do.

Good, original 2d art is timeless. I'm not so sure I'd rather see well animated caricatures over simply animated artworks either...

...I heartily second the motion to eliminate individual xp. It screws up so many parts of gameplay

Yeah, I love 2d so much, 90's was the fucking rennaissance of game art as far as I'm concerned. Theres really only a handfull of 3d games I can actually tolerate playing. Zion was going to be 3d originally (blech), I was just doing pre-production concepts for the modellers back then. Now it's all 2d I'm so happy I want to cry.
Uh oh. My last pencil just broke though so I'm pretty fucked now.
Fuck why did I spend my last few bucks on D&D dice? They were shiny like jewels is why damnit.

I'm uncertain about how the xp works exactly, have to get back to you on that one.