The New Shit - Phoenix's ideas

[Undead Phoenix]

Alrighty, so looking upon what the next year holds for the RPG genre and thinking that every title and its concept (except ZRPG) sounds banal, shit, boring, and that I could probably design a better game than most of those overpaid PR machines. So instead of going about this like a sensible man, like telling myself that it's a lot harder to do than you think, learning how to code proper like, and to oh-god-avoid-the-codex-like-the-plague: I just shrug, crack open a bottle of Brown ale, take a couple of swigs, and get t' work. As my coding skills are limited to a smattering of basic and I most likely have ADHD, insomnia and a growing dependency upon alcohol, I'm certain that only I can single-handedly save RPGs. A messiah heralding the dawn of a new age, if you wish, and a more grimdark messiah you'd struggle to find.

Right, enough rambling. Facts first before more rambling - this will most likely never get further than sticking ideas together, but then again, the warm feeling of a developing plan is worth all the blood, sweat and tears you've poured into it. Right? That said, the massive need for massive amounts of code everything below would require need not come into consideration.

First things first, the concept: a fanasy 2D isometric turn-based strategy game on a hex-grid many units, heavily influenced by the likes of Jagged Alliance and Fire Emblem, crossbred with a RPG in the mould of Planescape: Torment and Fallout. This gives 2 quite different parts of the game, each leaning heavily on the other. I've an idea or two about a story to go with it, but without the foundations of good gameplay it would be worthless, so I'll be mulling it over while staggering back home from t' pub and regretting I have nothing more to fuel me once I reach 'ome.

Next, key features, some of which will be apparent from the main influences. First, I'll address some of the goals I'm aiming for with the TBS section, and secondly the TBS/RPG parts, and finally the RPG parts. I'm aiming for the main focus to be upon the player building up his or her own chosen group, trying to settle the rivalries and disputes between party members as best they can, before crushing their enemies upon a battlefield of their choice - whether this be a pitched battle, or an raid in the dead of the night.

Each unit represents a NPC: Self-explanatory really. Each with individual party banters, skills, liked and disliked personnel.

High number of units: Allows the execution of more advanced strategies, such as having reserves, springing ambushes, and proper flanking. I'm aiming for 20 minimum

No maximum party size: Okay, there will have to be a maximum one, but if you want to take a unit with you you should be able to and deal with the consequences later, whether that be upkeep cost, special requests that unit may require upon recruitment, or your camp being raided while all your warriors are busy fighting elsewhere.

Units die easily: One wrong move can cost you a unit in a single turn. Poor planning should be punished harshly, but fairly, so you'll know what went wrong.

Perma-death: No easy ways out. Once a unit is dead they're dead, even if they were your favourite character, and only a reload can save them.

Consequences for character deaths: Once a unit has died, they won't just vanish. Other units will reference their death in flavour text and their death may cause you to recieve a new quest and different units. Who knows, they may have a grieving widow who needs comforting or son who hungers for revenge..

Non-combat capable party members: Why should everyone you recruit be able to mow their way through a horde of enemies single-handed? How about recruits who can help your case by say, increasing the morale of everyone else, or by improving the quality of your equipment?

Next episode: Later tonight or when I've sobered up in t' morning I'll post the ideas I have for a interesting combat engine, or maybe not, you never know. I might even also remember some of the main points I've forgotten!


Okay Codex, how can I make these bare-bones better and why?

Discuss!

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Sounds interesting.

 

[soggie]

Please don't make it turn based. It'll be hell lot of pain in the butt region when waiting for an entire army to move before you can access your turn.

Scripting wise, NPC deaths with consequences is something I'd love to see implemented in more games.

 

[Undead Phoenix]

Please don't make it turn based. It'll be hell lot of pain in the butt region when waiting for an entire army to move before you can access your turn.

Scripting wise, NPC deaths with consequences is something I'd love to see implemented in more games.

Still undecided, really.

Personally I'm torn between essentially a game that plays out turn-based, but in real time - it has the advantage of advancing through turns a lot faster making combat all the more quicker, or units having their own individual turns based on initiative - though I have my doubts how well that would translate with a high number of units you can control. Both have their own positives and negatives, but it's a too important a detail to leave it late to decide.

The thing about non-scripted NPC deaths is a nightmare when you consider all the code needed to make it function well. From what I know it shouldn't be too difficult to do, just using flags and IF statements should be able to do it, but it's the sheer volume of it that'd need to be done. Plus the fact that it doesn't really give you more content in one play-through, I think that is kind of off-putting to other developers

 

[Phelot]

Yeah, it might get tedious trying to manage 20+ units in turn based combat and then waiting for your enemy to move just as many too. I can see two possible solutions:

1) Make it squad turn based were units of a particular squad move at once, but this will still be tedious for the player since they'll still be moving each unit separately. The enemy should move faster, but you might get the mess that was Fallout TActics...

2) Have the player control only a few "squad leaders." This presumes that your units would be broken down into squads or maybe 6 or so troops each. You tell your squad leaders what their troops should be doing and when you end your turn, they all do what they've been ordered to do. The entire army could then act at once rather then waiting for each unit to end their turn. The AI would act the same.

Obviously that would limit the amount of control the player has over his units...

 

[soggie]

Please don't make it turn based. It'll be hell lot of pain in the butt region when waiting for an entire army to move before you can access your turn.

Scripting wise, NPC deaths with consequences is something I'd love to see implemented in more games.

Still undecided, really.

Personally I'm torn between essentially a game that plays out turn-based, but in real time - it has the advantage of advancing through turns a lot faster making combat all the more quicker, or units having their own individual turns based on initiative - though I have my doubts how well that would translate with a high number of units you can control. Both have their own positives and negatives, but it's a too important a detail to leave it late to decide.

The thing about non-scripted NPC deaths is a nightmare when you consider all the code needed to make it function well. From what I know it shouldn't be too difficult to do, just using flags and IF statements should be able to do it, but it's the sheer volume of it that'd need to be done. Plus the fact that it doesn't really give you more content in one play-through, I think that is kind of off-putting to other developers

About NPC deaths: It's not that hard, actually. I'm building my game world in this manner too, to be honest. What I do is I define relationships between NPCs: hostile, friendly, or neutral. If an NPC dies, friendly NPCs will be able to comment on him based on their knowledge bank, which is a list of parameters detailing their knowledge of the world. Each parameter comes with a dialog option, and during dialog scripting all you need to do is to make sure all parameters are tagged on with the correct dialog script.

That's the basic layer. You can go one layer deeper and integrate NPC deaths into the quest system too, simply by triggering it through an event-based polling system.

 

[Undead Phoenix]

Taking some of the key points from the first post, I'm aiming for combat to be:

a) Brutal - none of this chipping away at HP crap. Combat should be fast and deadly, with mistakes costing you dearly. Hitting an enemy in the head with a club should have a high chance to incapacitate them in one good blow or, if they survive, severely decrease their ability to attack and defend themselves

and

b) Tactical - going with what is said above, the possibilites offered by a hex-grid and a high number of varied units, there should be many ways in which you can achieve victory. Obviously with each unit having their own personality and unique abilities unit preservation will be key (except for all those ruthless overlords amongst you, of course), as will facing and the type of hex a unit is on. Basic stuff really, but you need the foundations stable in order to build upon it.

With these goals in mind, I'm leaning more towards two stats replacing HP: Health, which is what it says on the tin, and Energy, representing how ready the unit is. A standard Accuracy vs Evasion and Damage vs Armour with modifiers should complement it - after all, what more is there than "Do I hit or not?" and "How much damage did I do?"? In short, Health is health - being hit will decrease health, which in turn greatly decreases the units combat ability. Energy will decrease when you attack or are attacked, the amount it's decreased by depending on how close an attack is to hitting - narrowly avoiding an attack will lower Energy more than one which wasn't even close. A unit with full energy will be a lot more capable than an identical one that has used all of its own.

That said, here's a short scenario about how I envisage the combat system to play out:

A Hero has snuck into the tent of a Boss and is waiting for it to arrive so he can do the heroic task of killing him, in return recieving a shiny magical weapon from a nearby town. It's dark outside, but the tent is lit by two torches, so the Hero hides beside the entrance in order to get a surprise attack and recieve Accuracy and Damage bonuses. A minute passes before Minion #1 enters the tent with Minion #2, Minion #3, Minion #4 and the Boss following; the Hero attacks, easily killing Minion #1 just as it enters. Unfortunately for the Hero, the other enemies are now aware of him and rush into the tent, so as he attacks Minion #2 he doesn't get the bonuses for attacking an unaware enemy - despite this, the Hero is experienced enough to kill it without them, though this takes a lot more effort than killing the first minion. In the enemies turn Minions #3 and #4 attack him while the boss moves out of his line of sight; Minion #3 misses horribly, the Hero barely even having to dodge it while #4 gets lucky - forcing the Hero to quickly parry the attack, a move that drains him considerably. Starting to tire now the Hero attacks a minion, severely wounding it but unable to kill it, his weariness weakening him. The injured minion's feeble counter is easily pushed aside but the others luck holds and this time the Hero is too tired to block or dodge, recieving his first wound. Too distracted by the minions, he doesn't notice the Boss attack him from the rear. Wounded and exhausted, the Hero doesn't stand a chance as the Boss kill him with a single blow.

A lot longer than I'd hoped for, might need to trim it a little, but still, it should work as a good example of what I want Health and Energy to do. Unlike with an AC and HP system, every attack does damage, so even the strongest warrior won't be able to single-handedly destoy everything in their path. Next I'd like to post my thoughts on possible factors which will modify accuracy, evasion and damage (you know, something a lot more interesting that saying "if you are hit, you take x damage); but that'll wait until I've had a few opinions on how good/bad the system I've suggested is, its advantages/disadvantages, and how to improve it.

 

[Undead Phoenix]

Update 3: And now for something completely different

Considering that the last one failed even harder than I thought it would, U've been persuaded to go back onto what succeeded (specifically, going on about interesting parts while under the influence of my friend alcohol. This time, sadly, I have been relying on bottles of Strongbow. Alas, even cans are too high class for me :white trash: ).

Okay, though I wanted to avoid putting down gameplay features that are tied in to the story I have planned, this seems unavoidable.

Right, keeping things as simple as possible, the plot I have in mind involves the Player Character and his/her/its party being hunted by a powerful faction in the region. Now, what I'm looking to do which doesn't fit in with most RPGs is to add a Fame reputation. Now, this Fame stat will increase with every quest completed within a quest hub (village, town, whatever), but will be connected to the hub in question. To use an example, if you, say, ]completed all the quests in Shady Sands you'd have a high Fame stat in town, but your Fame in Junktown would still be zero. What I'm planning on doing with this is to introduce a sense of urgency in the player - stay too long in one place and the faction hunting you down will know where you are, sending a group of soldiers to kill you. These groups will consist of high-end enemies, so trying to stand and fight will likely get you a 'Game Over', at least in the early-to-mid sections of the game.

Of course, to be fair, hints will be given that if you don't leg it then something bad will happen - for example, an innkeeper may tell you that a few shady looking men have been asking questions about your group instead of his usual "I have this quest available for you" text. Fairs fair, there should be more quests in each quest hub than is needed for you to reach the minimum Fame threshold for you to be found and attacked - this will give the conundrum of whether to stay and complete that quest for this merchant for the 1000 gold reward, risking being discovered and having to have a nigh-impossible fight to win, or fleeing to the next town.

Giving the mechanics in short, for each point of Fame you get above <Fame Threshold> you increase the x% of being discovered by a search party from the faction your're trying to evade, resulting in the horrible rape of your party by enemies far too strong for you.

 

[soggie]

This sounds good. I'm ripping you off for my 7 days RL challenge.

 

[denizsi]

Don't forget to make a few dozen shitty concept art. You don't pretend to make a game without concept art.

And fanboys. Lots of fanboys.

 

[Undead Phoenix]

This sounds good. I'm ripping you off for my 7 days RL challenge.

Don't forget to make a few dozen shitty concept art. You don't pretend to make a game without concept art.

And fanboys. Lots of fanboys.

This is why I'm preaching to the Codex. A more rabid and hate-fuelled group of fanboys you couldn't hope for

 

[Undead Phoenix]

Hero to Zero / Zero to Hero

Now, in pretty much all games you have character progression. From finding new, more powerful guns in First-Person-Shooters to a level up in RPG to getting access to new units in a Strategy game you advance and become stronger as the game progresses. This is most evident in RPGs, though it is a common mistake that character progression = RPG.

Okay, so what I'm here to ask the Codex is this: what is your take on character progression?

There are really two different ways to go about it, two sides of the same coin so to speak. We can go with the PC being completely useless, barely able to kill a Goblin even if they have a +6 sword and then a month later being able to kill a Dragon with their bare hands. Or we can have the PC go from killing an Ogre at level 1, but then needing the help of a full party to even tickle a Dragon.

So, which do you prefer - should character progression be linear, or exponential?

What I'm thinking of for this game in mind is, as its going to be some RPG-Strategy hybrid, is a very linear progression for party NPCs and exponential growth from the PC. For example, early on in the game you might recruit a grizzled Clint Eastwood style mercenary; he's a high level and can turn most opponents into mush, but he won't advance much as he already knows most tricks in the book, while in the same area you might be able to recruit this farmhand with a funny-shaped birthmark: he's pretty much useless initially, but if you develop him completely he'd be the most powerful NPC you have access to.

Thoughts?

What I'm trying to avoid is increases in power that make absolutely no sense. Someone who picked up a weapon for the first time a couple of weeks ago should not be able to become more skilled than knights unless they have magical aid.

 

[JarlFrank]

What I'm trying to avoid is increases in power that make absolutely no sense. Someone who picked up a weapon for the first time a couple of weeks ago should not be able to become more skilled than knights unless they have magical aid.

Then you cannot realistically do this:

For example, early on in the game you might recruit a grizzled Clint Eastwood style mercenary; he's a high level and can turn most opponents into mush, but he won't advance much as he already knows most tricks in the book, while in the same area you might be able to recruit this farmhand with a funny-shaped birthmark: he's pretty much useless initially, but if you develop him completely he'd be the most powerful NPC you have access to.

Without adding in weapons like crossbows that are easy to master. But then again, *everyone* can master them. Or do you just mean that Clint Eastwood would have a lower level cap (say, 20) while Jack Shit the peasant has a higher one (say, 30)? If that's the case, I'd say it doesn't make much sense either.

What is good about Jack Shit the peasant or Lisa Cunt the whore is that they don't have any skills at all yet, so they gain experience really fast, and you can completely customize their skills to your liking, while Clint Eastwood is an awesome gunslinger and fistfighter but you won't ever be able to make him into a good engineer.

 

[Undead Phoenix]

I'm thinking giving limited chances to level up, or making it very hard to gain experience., like only when you experience something for the first time (say, you kill your first Orc and get 3xp, but killing your 2nd Orc gives only 2xp, then your 4th giving nothing at all). So the veteran of a couple of years will find it very difficult to actually face new challenges in order to overcome them, gaining lovely experience points - so will likely struggle to get enough experience to grow stronger. Whereas for the green recruit, everything is new so they will get experience from more places.

Weapons like crossbows would rely more on the the weapons characteristics than the skills of the characters themselves. So that'll mean less positive and negative modifiers from stats and skills.

I'm also planning on giving the non-combat worthy NPCs non-combat skills rather than letting them become combat monsters because, well, they have experience outside combat. So using your examples, you might want Lisa Cunt the whore in your party because she gives morale bonuses to the rest of the group, even if she won't get anywhere near as good in combat as your one-handed thief, and you might want Jack Shit the peasant in your party because the grey-haired strategist says he has the makings of a good soldier in him, even if it'll take a while to train him up.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I'm not very fond of character progression nowadays. I wouldn't mind playing a cRPG where there's practically no drastic character progression (because the action of the game happens in one month, for example. So, a character could get basic proficiency in some skills, but not become a master of any during the game time, or maybe dedicate that time to improve one skill mastered during his earlier years) as long as there's a rich character generation system.

 

[Undead Phoenix]

I think now would be a good time to expand on the leveling system I plan on using. To a large extent I'll be ripping it off Fallout - Attributes that cannot be changed (except at certain story points), Skills (that you get points for every level), and Traits (that you get 1 of each level, that are mostly unique for each NPC). Because XP will be harder to come by later in the game, the XP points you need for each level-up will stay the same.

Attributes are attributes. What can I say about them, really? The physical basis of a character and what they are made of.

Skills... now, I plan to divide skills into two different groups. Bah, I cannot really find the right words to explain it, but I'll give it a shot. One of the groups of skills is the one you put points in, while the other is derived from that. For example, you level up and put a point in Maces gaining 3 skill, and from that your skill in Bludgeoning Weapons is increased by two and your Melee Weapons skill is increased by 1: what this will mean is that you get much more skilled at handling maces, but you also get better at using all other weapons classed as bludgeoning and have a slight increase in your skill with all melee weapons.

Traits will be passive bonuses with huge variation. You might have a poacher in your group who has a trait which has a random chance to add meat to your inventory when you rest in a wooded area. When this NPC levels up you can choose from a few Traits to give to him: one to increase the chance of the poacher catching an animal and adding it to your inventory, another which removes the restriction of his trait only working when you rest, or another which gives him increased critical hit chance when using bows in battle.

 

[zeitgeist]

Skills... now, I plan to divide skills into two different groups. Bah, I cannot really find the right words to explain it, but I'll give it a shot. One of the groups of skills is the one you put points in, while the other is derived from that. For example, you level up and put a point in Maces gaining 3 skill, and from that your skill in Bludgeoning Weapons is increased by two and your Melee Weapons skill is increased by 1: what this will mean is that you get much more skilled at handling maces, but you also get better at using all other weapons classed as bludgeoning and have a slight increase in your skill with all melee weapons.

How about being able to put a point in any of the "tiers" and adjusting the distribution of bonuses accordingly? So for example as you've said, you put a point in Maces, you get +3 Maces, +2 Bludgeoning, +1 Melee. You put a point in Melee, you get +3 Melee, which translates into +2 Bludgeoning and +1 Maces. The general idea would be to choose between being sort of decent with most melee weapons, being somewhat specialized in bludgeoning, or being really good with a mace.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

One thing that I've found annoying in Fallout was how it was possible to get small arms over 100 on level 3 and how one could easily get the ability to score reliable headshots/eyeshots from a long distance.

 

[laclongquan]

The idea of high-ended parties hunting for you in your current location is good. It makes sure that you have to move constantly. BUT it's a chance for cheese if you are not careful in map making/scripting.

What does high-ended mean? Fully equipped, and skilled with those equipment? They can become prey so we get good loots. Experienced enemies that can you muchacho XP in this XP-starved game? Prey to get XP. You must careful not let the map has exploitable weak point that help you massacre them, or the scripts.

To limit XP hunting you can limit it to quest only, make it a reduced XP gains from killing repeated enemies. In the latter case, those hunting parties become even more desirable prey due to their limitedness in number of locations.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Or they should be so OP that the player must escape from them, in one way or another. Lisa Cunt the Whore distracts them but you lose her services - maybe for few days, maybe forever. Or you bribe one party to "get lost in the wilderness" for few days but the next time they demand much more money.

Agree with zeitgeist about the skillpoints.

Also, controlling large numbers of units in TB is not tedious if its done well. Fast animations (or none) with even faster ones for enemies can make the turns work quickly enough. Of course, some people cannot play JA2 or Steel Panthers, complaining that it's too tedious but these fucks can go play MW2 and forget about posting in the 'Dex. Fallout only failed in that the animation speed was somewhat slow (especially for the junkies!) which made the big city battles a pain. JA2 and X-Com allow you to set the animation speed to your liking and I think one of Killap's patches pretty much fixed it in Fallout2 too, to an extent.

 

[laclongquan]

If I remember correctly, no one ever complain of TB combat done poorly in Silent Storm series and HammerSickle. Complaints about PK yes but not about combat.

 

[Undead Phoenix]

Skills... now, I plan to divide skills into two different groups. Bah, I cannot really find the right words to explain it, but I'll give it a shot. One of the groups of skills is the one you put points in, while the other is derived from that. For example, you level up and put a point in Maces gaining 3 skill, and from that your skill in Bludgeoning Weapons is increased by two and your Melee Weapons skill is increased by 1: what this will mean is that you get much more skilled at handling maces, but you also get better at using all other weapons classed as bludgeoning and have a slight increase in your skill with all melee weapons.

How about being able to put a point in any of the "tiers" and adjusting the distribution of bonuses accordingly? So for example as you've said, you put a point in Maces, you get +3 Maces, +2 Bludgeoning, +1 Melee. You put a point in Melee, you get +3 Melee, which translates into +2 Bludgeoning and +1 Maces. The general idea would be to choose between being sort of decent with most melee weapons, being somewhat specialized in bludgeoning, or being really good with a mace.

A good point that I hadn't really thought of. Yes, I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to do that as it shouldn't unbalance the skills if you weight them correctly.

The idea of high-ended parties hunting for you in your current location is good. It makes sure that you have to move constantly. BUT it's a chance for cheese if you are not careful in map making/scripting.

What does high-ended mean? Fully equipped, and skilled with those equipment? They can become prey so we get good loots. Experienced enemies that can you muchacho XP in this XP-starved game? Prey to get XP. You must careful not let the map has exploitable weak point that help you massacre them, or the scripts.

To limit XP hunting you can limit it to quest only, make it a reduced XP gains from killing repeated enemies. In the latter case, those hunting parties become even more desirable prey due to their limitedness in number of locations.

High-end in this case means that the hunting parties will consist of small numbers of high level enemies that have good, but not magical, equipment. I'm thinking they will escalate with each group you kill - if the 5 man band that you sent after the enemy is slaughtered, what use would it be to send 5 more after them? No, better double the size of the group and send a competant underling to make sure they succeed: flies can be ignored, but when the fucker is landing on your food you're going to make sure you squash them good You know what I mean?

Choosing to stand and fight should be a high risk, high reward decision that may come back to bite you at the later in the game. Having them grow stronger each time will stop them being easy targets, shows that you are having an effect on the game-world, and will probably get most of your group dead very, very soon.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Fallout only failed in that the animation speed was somewhat slow (especially for the junkies!) which made the big city battles a pain. JA2 and X-Com allow you to set the animation speed to your liking and I think one of Killap's patches pretty much fixed it in Fallout2 too, to an extent.

Fallout has an animation speed slider too. I always play at highest speed.

 

[Murk]

have you ever played Age of Wonders? Many things you describe are already in that game.

Assuming this game ever hits a point where it is not just a series of posts on a forum, the animation/speed thing for turns is a silly argument. There are plenty of games that have 100s of units on screen, are turn based, and don't take forever.

Der Langrisser, for instance, has a fast-forward button you can press and hold during enemy turns to speed up the movement and you can skip battle animations all together.

 

[Kaucukovnik]

I like most of your design goals. They go against the current misconception of what RPG genre is.

Two things I don't like that much:

1. Skill spread among characters

In your given example, I believe the most efficient way to develop all characters would be:
- a basic set of combat skills
- fill the rest of "skill capacity" with complementing non-combat ones
While having several purely combat characters, number depending on the amount of useful non-combat skills that need to be covered.
Simply because the "firepower" spread among them is far more useful than having several warriors and several supporting characters. Not entirely bad, but smells like a way to cookie cutter builds.
Sure, it is practical to develop your team this way, but it leaves little space for characters like a cowardly bard or pacifist monk. Difficult combat with outnumbering the foe as a crucial factor doesn't make things better. If tactical combat is the main focus, fine. But if you want to leave equal (or more) space for roleplaying, I think some way to encourage more diverse characters is needed.
What I'm implying is some form of not overly restrictive class system, maybe just some nice bonuses for specialists to make them more desirable.

2. Characters die easily:

Leads to one of two things:
-numerous reloading, defeating the point of high difficulty
-no attachment of the player to the characters, since they come and go too fast



I really like the skill system suggestion with bonuses applying to "parent/child" skills, prevents nonsense like a master swordfighter who cannot kill a rat when using an axe.