Also: Do you have a character system already selected? What about lore, design choices, enemy types, etc.
Yay! A question that is not about size of the pixel :D
Well, at the moment I need to finish the engine. So the real meat of the game is scheduled "for later", once the quest system, skills, etc works I will start these... and I know it's lame to start the most important part later, but I simply don't want to be distracted by technicalities when I will be dealing with the gameplay. But I can give the general premise:
- The game is about the world, and less about the storyline. It is NOT a dungeon crawler, the overworld is an important place (not just a transition between dungeon).
- Most NPCs will live outside, somewhere in the wilderness. I want to avoid standard "go to a city and meet thousand NPCs most of which are lowly bantenders that ask you to kill rats". I want a rich world, with local inhabitants. Like you go to a swamp and meet a frog prince who got tuned out to this state because he refused to marry a nearby witch after he promised to marry her and then didn't deliver. A hermits on the desert. A king that has 3 daughters and gives you a quest to find suitable husbands for them. And so on. All of these will be local quests, not connected to the "grand storyline". Personally, I hate such grand storyline concept where everything revolves about saving the world or something. I want a rich world, where most people have their local problems and don't care about the big picture. I want to deliever the feel of a living world.
- The main storyline will be non obtrusive. Sure, there will be one and it will eventually lead to the final resolutuion, but that won't be the most important part. More fun will come from going around and emerging with local/regional storylines.
- The overall mood I strive for is a colourful fairy tale like fantasy. Also, I want some humour included too, not to a degree of a grotesque or a parody but still, I'm a bit fed up with all these "always deadly serious storylines" in games. They could drop a shy troll who has a quest to help proclaiming his love once in a while... Anyway, I will try to do it in my game.
- Small bits of the world's lore will be included in variosus NPCs conversations. I always loved when there was for example some ancient artifact that everyone talks about and the player started to recognize it after a while (and no, it won't be "found later by the player and by a coincidence that's what was needed to kill the last boss", no, I mean a real lore)
- Freedom of movement (exploration) would be important. I will try to avoid locking locations or putting unbeatable monsters and therefore artificially dictate where the player should go to next. Yes, there will be a hint of some sort where the player should go in case he/she is lost, but that would be a mild hint at most. No urgency, no restriction, you are exploring the world as you like.
- If you are worried about getting lost in a huge world without directions, I find it very unlikely. The total world map will be a bit less than 100x100 with clearly defined and distinctive areas (swamp, desert, etc). Also the quest will clearly state where the NPC is (like go to A5). Yes, I know some will say it's too small, but I really, really, really hate all those ten thousand miles world where you travel for days and just see trees and random bandits
Small, compact and rich world will be in this game.
- Character creation, I have no clue yet.
- There will be no level caps. I know, a controversial decision and it will lead to some problems with balance during the late game. But honestly, do we really need yet another game with restrictive level up system? Once in a while there should be a game where you could level up to level 100 (and I don't mean by spending months of real time to do it), and I guess my game could be that one
What about the combat system?
Hmmm, a hard question to me. I did dozens of combat systems in my life and well, all these starts to getting merged together in my mind :D Anyway, I never had problems with these so I don't expect any issues here.
Generally, the current system in the tech demo will stay. It's a very fast turn based combat (if you fight a goblin and you are level 100 you just press the same button a few times, brainlessly, and it dies; if you see a powerfull hydra you can sweat over every decision and decide what spell to use and so on), generally I really love the flexible pace of the combat, it takes always exactly as much time as needed, no matter the opponent.
I will post more about it later (it's not finished).
I like good pixel art but you really, a 13-pixel wide beholder taking up your whole screen is just too much. Sharpen it by power of 2 or 3, or more, and we'll talk again.
Well, on those screens I made pictures of the combat and during the attack sequence (so it's an absolute maximum zoom), in dungeons these are smaller...
Even without bringing aesthetics into it, there are practical concerns. When it's this pixellated, it's hard to tell what's going on. In this image for example:
What is even going on here? What do those blue lines represent? Leaky ceiling? Blue snakes hanging from the rafters? Impending tentacle rape? Who knows?
Have you played the tech demo by any chance? In the live game it's clear what it is... I mean, here you see only static pictures without context, it' much more clear in the game (BTW, I really liked some of your interpretations of what it is :D).
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