Character creation and customisation
Premade or created characters?
Over the past 3 weeks Oliver and I have been working on character creation for the game. A lot of people wanted to create their own character and potentially their entire party while many people said they preferred having a premade set of party members.
So we thought, ok why can't we do both? And if so, how can we do it to the level of creating a truly custom set of characters along the lines of the SSI Goldbox games where you create not only your characters but also their appearance?
Then we took it a step further and decided you can also customise not only the in game combat sprite but also the character portrait too.
How it works?
First off, this is all very WIP. Things will change as we get further along.
We have a system where you choose your basic sprite and then choose from a variety of parts: from heads to hair, weapons, helmets. Everything can also be recolored. Everything is tied to the class of the character so you will have different options for a spellcaster compared to a martial class.
The portrait system works the same. You have your basic face and then customise from a list of parts, eyebrows, hair, beards, even the clothing you want on the portrait.
If you want a deeper look Oliver has an in depth video on his Youtube channel that also goes into how things work behind the scenes in Godot.
Further customisation
I'll write more about the skill part of character customisation in the future but if you have watched Oliver's video above you will see there will be things such as choosing a background and character personality traits along the usual skills, all of which will play a part in how the party interacts with the world.
Your background along with giving some skill bonuses might also mean certain events triggering in the world providing either more flavour text or interactions making things feel a bit more like a role playing game based on who your characters are.
We hope this will help really get players immersed in the game and offer a lot of replay value as well.