A cyberpunk tactical RPG - Zion

[Satori (original)]

Is that character meant to be a woman? If not those are awfully feminine legs; plus are people in the future allowed to legally walk around with katanas? Good job otherwise.

 

[bloodychill]

Experience works exactly the way the uh... first guy seconded it? You get a set amount for each battle that all your characters share. I hate the way FFT does it where you get some for each move because then people cheese it and keep an enemy alive for hours hitting him and then healing him. I watched an old roomate do this and was like "why the hell did they design the game this way, this is retarded." I still love FFT, but man. Horrible.

When I think about good 2D, anime easily comes to mind. Akira, anything Miyazaki, man. This is why animation is important to me. Right now, we're talking about whether these new concepts will be easily animated. If our animator can pull it off, I'm cool with making the shift.

Regarding exploration, I've been thinking about going with an old SNES-style world map where you go from town to town and can find points of interest along the way. When you reach a town, you don't explore but you can take missions and talk to various people. We're still working this out though.

 

[Murk]

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).

Glorious! I love specific classes. since FF Tactics, my most replayed ps1 game (and probably any system for that matter), I'll use it as an example. A problem with the classes was that after a while you would have ubermenschen that could handle anything. some of the classes were flexible enough to be full on survivors - the samurai draw out ability was ridiculous, especially if you switched to a stronger class and equipped it as a secondary.

On the topic of experience points - wihle FFTactics' style of rewarding every action that succeeds with XP was cool and allowed you to level weaker characters safely, it also meant that you could break the game - have Ramza use 'yell' on himself a few times and he's moving 3 times per cycle of turns - have him use those 3 times to continue it and suddenly he's at the point where he's getting multiple turns in succession - and each casting increases his exp thus leveling him. Whenever you acted on anyone of your same level, you got 10 xp, thus ten acts on yourself = level up! Though character level wasn't as important a factor in the game as most others, it did increase your primary attributes of physical attack, magic attack, and the most important - speed.

Basically if you played your cards right you could get to level 99 before you even got through a few story battles. Certain combinations of abilities just made you damn near invincible...

I think I went off on a tangent, sorry.

Game looks cool and it blows my mind that you were willing to change your art style at the bitching of the Codex, but very awesome that you guys take feedback from the potential market seriously.

 

[Emotional Vampire]

Experience works exactly the way the uh... first guy seconded it? You get a set amount for each battle that all your characters share. I hate the way FFT does it where you get some for each move because then people cheese it and keep an enemy alive for hours hitting him and then healing him. I watched an old roomate do this and was like "why the hell did they design the game this way, this is retarded."

Because that's how all japanese "tactical" games work. The trick is to have twice the level your opponent has.

 

[Murk]

I remember Tactics Ogre, the predecessor to FFTactics, being utterly brutal if you weren't at least the same level as the enemies in story battles. And considering that death is permanent in that game for the overwhelming majority, possibly all of it depending on which routes you take and what characters you have, it was fucking frustrating to see your characters get fucked. Luckily most generics were traded out for uniques by the mid game.

 

[Trithne]

I agree that the new sprites just look better than the originals, and I have no troubles with anime style to begin with.

I may've missed it mentioned ealier in the thread, but how's the actual game going to work? Are you using isometric-square, iso-hex? If square, are you having diagonal movement? Is a turn a turn for your whole squad, or a single character?

Also, I generally don't care much for being fed 6 characters and being expected to like them. I always preferred Syndicate's style of 'here's some faceless goons, train/equip them how you see fit.'

 

[Damned Registrations]

The problem to me isn't even that you can cheese it. You can cheese xp out of anything with repeatable battles. It's that it, once again, forced you into particular methods of fighting. Mages were great powerful classes in FFT... until you let them mug everything for a dozen battles. After wiping out 3-4 enemies with a single spell and getting half a level for 12 stages in a row, suddenly all the enemies are much higher level and better equipped while your mages are screwed. So you pretty much had to cheese things just to keep everyone up to speed.

How is speed going to work? Will it have some sort of multiple turns per round for high speed system like FFT and co did? Or will it be the more primitive style where speed just determines initiative and everyone gets one move + act each phase?

How will job classes unlock? Will it be a simple branching tree, or will some jobs require multiple previous jobs to unlock like the highest tier stuff in FFT? Or will it be stat based like the ogre battle ones? I always liked the units with special requirements in ogre battle, like that unit having killed 30 units to become a terror knight, or not killing any to be a priest. Or the item dependent upgrades in ogre battle and shining force games. Makes the special classes seem more special when only a limited number of characters can have them, even if that number could include any of the characters.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I remember Tactics Ogre, the predecessor to FFTactics, being utterly brutal if you weren't at least the same level as the enemies in story battles. And considering that death is permanent in that game for the overwhelming majority, possibly all of it depending on which routes you take and what characters you have, it was fucking frustrating to see your characters get fucked. Luckily most generics were traded out for uniques by the mid game.

Tactics Ogre had the most abysmal balance imaginable. For every level a character had over another in battle, he'd have 10% higher hit and dodge rates, and +10 damage. As a result, with a character ~7 level higher than the enemy, every enemy has a 1% chance to hit you, and you have a 100% chance to hit them. Your hits will be instant kills. Every hit gets an automatic counter attack is the victim is in range. Of course, you gain next to no xp for these kills, but after the battle, the character with the most kills gets an MVP award... 1 free level up. Result: A naked hobo with 10 levels over the enemy from training can solo his way through the entire game.

 

[Victor Pflug]

How is speed going to work? Will it have some sort of multiple turns per round for high speed system like FFT and co did? Or will it be the more primitive style where speed just determines initiative and everyone gets one move + act each phase?

How will job classes unlock? Will it be a simple branching tree, or will some jobs require multiple previous jobs to unlock like the highest tier stuff in FFT? Or will it be stat based like the ogre battle ones? I always liked the units with special requirements in ogre battle, like that unit having killed 30 units to become a terror knight, or not killing any to be a priest. Or the item dependent upgrades in ogre battle and shining force games. Makes the special classes seem more special when only a limited number of characters can have them, even if that number could include any of the characters.

Justin would know about the speed question, but I do know that yes, the classes are branching trees with higher classes reqiring several other class disciplines in order to be attained. You can also mix and match the abilities of different classes once you reach certain amounts of experience with them.

 

[SkeleTony]

Anime is gay...in a bad way. Especially the sort we see in console-styled video games where every character looks like a cross between a gnome and one of those "Trollkins" from the old Saturday morning cartoons.

 

[WholesaleGenocide]

I love the work on the new sprite -- looks damn distinguished.

Depending on where your game draws its influences (I can't really tell in regard to gameplay, yet, though some J influences are obvious) you should be careful as to how you divvy out exp in regard to side missions (and namely the act of repeating them, aka grinding)

I'll give an example:

Some TRPGs are primarily based on player skill (Fire Emblem, maybe Silent Storm though you can grind in it) while others you can overcome skill by grinding (Disgaea, anything Nippon Ichi has ever made, Final Fantasy Tactics, etc).

So, basically what I'm saying is how grind heavy is the game going to be? Can you resurrect characters? Can you repeat side missions/primary missions (are they going to be repopulated with generics the second line through?)

 

[Damned Registrations]

Skill and grinding aren't mutually exclusive. You can win fights in FFT or Disgaea with comically underleveled characters if you have the skills as a player. The fact that you can also take side missions until the world destroying demon dies in a single attack is just an amusing side effect of having an open game world. X-Com is pretty much the definitive tactical combat game, but you NEED to grind in that. Without those weapon upgrades you can't even scratch the paint on anything tougher than ethereals and floaters. And a squad of rookies without psi training is pretty much just a can of meat late game. Doesn't matter how well you set up your smoke bombs and firing squads when a chrysalid pops up and your entire squad emptying all their AP on it can't take it down.

The other side of the coin is also true: even in FFT with a huge level and equipment advantage over the enemy, you'll still be screwed if your team isn't built and used properly. You can grind until everyone has a 97% chance to dodge and counter attack a weapon strike aimed at them and only takes 3% damage from spells, only to be killed by a bunch of fucking birds with their non weapon melee attacks, ranged magical abilities that aren't spells, and ability to heal themselves and allies.

These things aren't horrible balance, they're just extremes of the systems. Developers shouldn't worry about them so much. An extra bit of freedom is far more desirable than having the entire world scaled to you so that the difficulty never varies. Compare to something like Front Mission 3: Grinding is basically impossible/useless, as you almost always have enough cash to equip yourself with whatever is available and your characters' skills make little difference. Everything comes down to the specific tactics you employ, your team build and luck. But that doesn't make it a more interesting game, because you've sacrificed variety for enforced balance.

Balance things for a reasonable play through (Say, doing 1 side mission for every 2-3 story missions) and if plowing straight through is nearly impossible and dicking around forever turns you into a god, so be it, the players that enjoy those aspects will have a good time. Just make sure that plowing straight through is possible, and not completely doomed by overwhelming numbers (Such as in say, Diablo 2, for lack of a tactical game example)

 

[WholesaleGenocide]

snip

Actually, I see what you mean, especially with the Disgaea reference. There are always going to be people that try to break the system by grinding forever. It's just like people that play JRPGs and just power level for hours before actually doing anything so they can obliterate everything in their path despite the fact that the game can often be beaten easily without any grinding at all.

BTW, with FFT, the game is decently challenging until you bring Orlandu into the equation -- then it just gets stupidly easy.

 

[bloodychill]

How is speed going to work? Will it have some sort of multiple turns per round for high speed system like FFT and co did? Or will it be the more primitive style where speed just determines initiative and everyone gets one move + act each phase?

How will job classes unlock? Will it be a simple branching tree, or will some jobs require multiple previous jobs to unlock like the highest tier stuff in FFT? Or will it be stat based like the ogre battle ones? I always liked the units with special requirements in ogre battle, like that unit having killed 30 units to become a terror knight, or not killing any to be a priest. Or the item dependent upgrades in ogre battle and shining force games. Makes the special classes seem more special when only a limited number of characters can have them, even if that number could include any of the characters.

Speed works like D&D, ie the primitive-style you mentioned.

Classes work a lot like FFT's jobs (a little too much, but whatever). Basically, each class has ten levels. There are seven skills and three qualities that can be learned with each job. At levels 2, 3 ,4 ,6 ,7, 8, and 9, you pick a skill to learn. At levels 5 and 10, you can pick one of the qualities to learn. Qualities are permanent to your character regardless of which class your character currently is using. Skills however are not - you have to be that class to use the skill, though you can have one class equipped as a subclass from which you can use skills. At level 5, you have access to the classes that inherit from your current class.

I may've missed it mentioned ealier in the thread, but how's the actual game going to work? Are you using isometric-square, iso-hex? If square, are you having diagonal movement? Is a turn a turn for your whole squad, or a single character?

Also, I generally don't care much for being fed 6 characters and being expected to like them. I always preferred Syndicate's style of 'here's some faceless goons, train/equip them how you see fit.'

Isometric square, you won't be able to move diagonally. In contrast, ranged weapons have an absolute range circle around your character; basically the overlay shape when you click "move" will be a diamond (or square, really) while the one when you click attack will be circular. This may be changed because it's a little weird, but I want to test it out more before I'm sure. Each turn is a turn for a character, not a team.

Regarding characters, yeah, you get six set characters which you may or may not like (I hope you like them, but yeah, everyone has different taste). However, you have complete control over how they fight and how their abilities/stats develop. The main characters cannot die, but if all six are wounded or a main mission objective is failed, it's game over. I'm looking at having other penalties for having a character get wounded, but haven't decided on anything yet.

Regarding repeatable side missions and scalable enemy levels, which someone mentioned, I'm not sure which way I'm going to go, but right now I'm leaning toward having certain side missions be repeatable and for enemy's levels to scale with the characters'. I've designed the AI such that it gets smarter the further into the game you get and it starts to cheat some - enemies get combinations of qualities that the player would have to work really hard to get, as well as access to more than two class' set of skills at one time.

 

[Pliskin]

"Syndicate" for the SNES. That's some chibi-head shit right there. Strangely, the game itself was all kinds of awesome.

Gameplay ----------------------------------------------> Graphics

 

[RaXz]

I like the concept art.

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

It's the other name of Jerusalem, don't know if there is some analogy in the Matrix about that. That rebel ship in the Matrix was named Nebuchadnezzar, named after a king that conquered Jerusalem.

 

[Humanophage]

I'm fine with the character style so long as it boosts your sales. I'll be interested in the game at any rate. Naturally, the new character style is better. The whole art direction reminds me a bit of Septerra Core (which I've never played, so perhaps my judgement is inadequate.) Pleasant, on the overall.

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?

I just wanted to note that this excessive presence of Japanese culture in cyberpunk was probably dictated by fears of Japan becoming a super-power in the 80s. That is no longer relevant: its economic and even cultural expansion has slowed down a great deal. It would be nice to see cyberpunk incorporate more Chinese stuff instead. Sinophobia is perfectly appropriate nowadays. A Eurabian cyberpunk setting would be quite fascinating as well, not to mention drawing possible controversies and attracting attention to the game.

 

[SCO]

If you do go for collective experience be aware that on those systems people like to solo games so they can progress faster. For instance one of my favorite ways to play BG I & II is with a sole F/M/T or/and F/M/C.

You might want to disallow or allow this. I vote allow. But then any new characters would be in a permanent disadvantage.

 

[bloodychill]

We are visiting cultures other than American and Japanese, for sure, and considering nation states as we know them now don't exist in Zion, it's sort of a moot point.

If you do go for collective experience be aware that on those systems people like to solo games so they can progress faster. For instance one of my favorite ways to play BG I & II is with a sole F/M/T or/and F/M/C.

This will not be an issue with Zion as you have a set 6-man party since the game is very story-driven. I've been thinking about a sequel already where you customize the make-up of the party but that's a another discussion.

 

[Satori (original)]

Progress update please? This really does look great.

In terms of story, we plan to have 35+ story missions (many of which are written at this time, many of which are not), and as many side missions as we can think up. Talby came up with some pretty cool side missions that he can post if he wishes.

As far as code goes, huge portions of the engine are coded and even tested, but a lot is not.

Demo soon?

 

[ghostdog]

I just wanted to note that this excessive presence of Japanese culture in cyberpunk was probably dictated by fears of Japan becoming a super-power in the 80s. That is no longer relevant: its economic and even cultural expansion has slowed down a great deal. It would be nice to see cyberpunk incorporate more Chinese stuff instead. Sinophobia is perfectly appropriate nowadays. A Eurabian cyberpunk setting would be quite fascinating as well, not to mention drawing possible controversies and attracting attention to the game.

Not really, I think it's more part of the imagery. Tokyo always looked like a futuristic city. It still looks like that, compared to other major cities. I think that's where Riddley Scott based his visuals of Blade Runner, and let's face it , blade runner more or less defined the look of the "cyberpunk" environment.

 

[SuicideBunny]

let's face it , blade runner more or less defined the look of the "cyberpunk" environment.

the same way orcs and elves define fantasy.
thankfully, there are exceptions.

 

[hal900x]

I just wanted to note that this excessive presence of Japanese culture in cyberpunk was probably dictated by fears of Japan becoming a super-power in the 80s. That is no longer relevant: its economic and even cultural expansion has slowed down a great deal. It would be nice to see cyberpunk incorporate more Chinese stuff instead. Sinophobia is perfectly appropriate nowadays. A Eurabian cyberpunk setting would be quite fascinating as well, not to mention drawing possible controversies and attracting attention to the game.

Not really, I think it's more part of the imagery. Tokyo always looked like a futuristic city. It still looks like that, compared to other major cities. I think that's where Riddley Scott based his visuals of Blade Runner, and let's face it , blade runner more or less defined the look of the "cyberpunk" environment.

Philip K. Dick did not conceive of his world as "Cyberpunk". Ridley Scott's look and feel was primarily influenced by the works of William Gibson(arguably the creator of Cyberpunk). If you've read any Gibson, you know it is filled with the tone Humanophage references. And Gibson was indeed influenced by the fear of Japan's power at the time. Much of the ideas about corporate rule, mixing of Japanese and English dialects and so forth came out of that.

 

[ghostdog]

I just wanted to note that this excessive presence of Japanese culture in cyberpunk was probably dictated by fears of Japan becoming a super-power in the 80s. That is no longer relevant: its economic and even cultural expansion has slowed down a great deal. It would be nice to see cyberpunk incorporate more Chinese stuff instead. Sinophobia is perfectly appropriate nowadays. A Eurabian cyberpunk setting would be quite fascinating as well, not to mention drawing possible controversies and attracting attention to the game.

Not really, I think it's more part of the imagery. Tokyo always looked like a futuristic city. It still looks like that, compared to other major cities. I think that's where Riddley Scott based his visuals of Blade Runner, and let's face it , blade runner more or less defined the look of the "cyberpunk" environment.

Philip K. Dick did not conceive of his world as "Cyberpunk". Ridley Scott's look and feel was primarily influenced by the works of William Gibson(arguably the creator of Cyberpunk). If you've read any Gibson, you know it is filled with the tone Humanophage references. And Gibson was indeed influenced by the fear of Japan's power at the time. Much of the ideas about corporate rule, mixing of Japanese and English dialects and so forth came out of that.

Gibson's first full-fledged novel, Neuromancer, was published 2 years after Blade Runner came out. Before that he had only written a couple of short stories for some SF-magazines. Gibson has actually said that he was working at an early draft of neuromancer when he went to see Blade Runner and he was driven mad at how much his book had in common with the movie. After that he tried to re-wrote the whole thing to try and make it less similar to BR. link

 

[hal900x]

I just wanted to note that this excessive presence of Japanese culture in cyberpunk was probably dictated by fears of Japan becoming a super-power in the 80s. That is no longer relevant: its economic and even cultural expansion has slowed down a great deal. It would be nice to see cyberpunk incorporate more Chinese stuff instead. Sinophobia is perfectly appropriate nowadays. A Eurabian cyberpunk setting would be quite fascinating as well, not to mention drawing possible controversies and attracting attention to the game.

Not really, I think it's more part of the imagery. Tokyo always looked like a futuristic city. It still looks like that, compared to other major cities. I think that's where Riddley Scott based his visuals of Blade Runner, and let's face it , blade runner more or less defined the look of the "cyberpunk" environment.

Philip K. Dick did not conceive of his world as "Cyberpunk". Ridley Scott's look and feel was primarily influenced by the works of William Gibson(arguably the creator of Cyberpunk). If you've read any Gibson, you know it is filled with the tone Humanophage references. And Gibson was indeed influenced by the fear of Japan's power at the time. Much of the ideas about corporate rule, mixing of Japanese and English dialects and so forth came out of that.

Gibson's first full-fledged novel, Neuromancer, was published 2 years after Blade Runner came out. Before that he had only written a couple of short stories for some SF-magazines. Gibson has actually said that he was working at an early draft of neuromancer when he went to see Blade Runner and he was driven mad at how much his book had in common with the movie. After that he tried to re-wrote the whole thing to try and make it less similar to BR. link

Well, I would try and do some back-rev research, but that does sound pretty conclusive. One wonders how much truth comes out when artist's egos are involved. Definitely interesting. Cyberpunk is one of my favorite...genres? Gibson was good but some of Sterling's work (some...some of it is crap, too) hits closer for me. Blade Runner is in my top 10, for sure. The new Blu-Ray release with the 4 versions is godly.