New Project: Strategy game

  I've been working on a strategy RPG for a while now.  I wanted to keep all the damage values in the very small range.  Like 2HP enemies, 1 Damage spells and so on.  I couldn't come up with a format for this game though.  Then last night I got insight.  Why not make it in the form of a TCG game?  Construct a deck of spells and summons and have them duke it out.  Magic: The Gathering even uses small scale critters...  But I didn't want to design a whole TCG.  I just needed about a dozen or so "cards."

  How about turret defense?  Those games are popular and most people make at least one.  But building turrets to defend against waves wouldn't be what I'm going for.  So what about turret attack?  Summon waves of creeps to attack the enemy.  They aren't completely unheard of.  Nah, it doesn't quite work either.  There could be turret attack levels, but it shouldn't be the whole game.

  I finally decided on a format.  AI combat.  Each spell has certain rules (printed on its card).  A fireball's rules might be "FIRE: 1 Damage.  Movement:  Forward 2".  Once you play the spell the fireball is created and would follow its AI pattern precisely until it hits an enemy or the outer boundary.  Of course, with a movement pattern of just Forward would mean anyone could just step out of the way.  So let's make the hero's immobile!  That wouldn't be fun by itself... so let's add movement cards!  Moving one space to the side would mean you can no longer [be] hit by fireballs anymore.  So, play the movement card ON the fireball.  Once it's beside your enemy just use a movement card to turn it towards the enemy, you now have a sideways moving fireball.  On the other hand...  the enemy could move himself one space to the side and one space forward in two turns.  The fireball would never be able to reach him since with "Forward 2" movement the fireball would always be one tile early/late no matter how you turn it.

  Spells would have very simple AI representative of ballistics.  But critter summons would be different.  A Goblin could have the card "POWER: 1 Damage.  1 Health.  Movement: One towards boss (Tie Horizontal)".  This would summon the Goblin.  He'd move one towards the enemy leader taking the shortest possible path.  In the event of a movement tie, the same number of tiles to the destination, the Goblin would prefer the horizontal option.  With this in mind, a summoner could use terrain or create walls to prevent the enemy Goblins from reach him (which in turn would limit the enemy in what they can do for attacks).

  A lot of Goblins could be trouble.  They'd absorb all your fireballs.  So why not a Hunter?  A critter who's AI pattern is nearest any enemy.  They'd seek out and attack Goblins.  Back to movement cards; use a movement card to get the Goblin out of harms way while getting it closer to your enemy.  Suddenly I got a strategy game going!

  All sorts of classic RPG staples like Healing, poison, monsters, bosses and treasures could be summoned to the field in your attempt to defeat the enemy.  Slimes that rarely move, traps that deny passages, creatures immune to magic, creatures with amazing speed... Well, looks like I have a lot of work to do.  What I like about this project is movement and reactive AI doesn't even need to be in the game, every enemy moves exactly how its card says it will.  If the critters are acting stupidly, that's intentional!

I don't work properly, Lok.

The Process: Resources

heroofdark asked;

  What do you do to get sprites, music, sounds and other resources? Do you create them or get them from the internet? And if you create them, what program do you use, or what website do you go to? I'm getting into GameMaker (still on tutorials until the semester ends), and I'm wondering where to get other resources than what's prepackaged.


Sprites

  I first start with place holder sprites.  I make these in Gamemaker's in-program graphics editor (basically MS Paint+1).  My placeholder graphics are usually solid squares, circles and so on representing the hitbox.

  Next, when I'm ready for animation, I download some sample sheets from the internet.  Google Image Search usually.  If I'm making a platformer I use Mario for example.

  Once all the animations are working correctly I replace them with actual graphics.  I make these in an old program called Grafx2.  It's a 256 colour editor with quick functions for shapes and shading.  I use it since it's very fast, not because it has a lot of features.

Backgrounds

  Depending on what I'm trying to accomplish I use a combination of Grafx2 and GIMP.  Grafx2 has a very nice circles/spheres tool.  Here's a sample I made:

This is a quick sphere template

  It takes roughly 30 seconds to make one of these in Grafx2.  After that I open up the image in GIMP and add a lot of filters.  Take a look at these two pictures.  Notice the arrangement of the circles.  I used the same spheres template for both of them.

Added mosaic and reflections

Lines for webs, spray tool for spider.

  Making graphics like this is my favourite part.  Unfortunately it's very hard to stay thematic when designing like this.  Suppose I need a forest and an ocean;  If I'm quick designing like above there might be nothing even remotely resembling trees or water.  Other than that the combination of Grafx2 and GIMP is great for me.  In the past I used a program called sTile or something like that for making tessellations, but I've never been able to find it again since my Windows 3.1 days.

Music and Sound

  Typically I use the FL Studio demo.  I'm not attached to it, but I'm not very good with sound anyway.  The only downside to the demo is you can't save works in progress.  However, you can still export files.  This means if you "one-shot" it you still get most of the functionality.  This is not good for making music, but great for making sound effects.  A couple "3x osc"'s and reverb effects and you have a sword strike or fireball... easy.  I don't really have a program for making music.  In the past I used Noteworthy Composer to edit MIDI files, but that's not really good for music in modern games (even indy ones).

---

  Feel free to leave a comment if you have any more questions.

[][][][][][][], Lok

It's Working.

  Got the main physics engine completed.  A simple platformer with working platforms.  Now I just need graphics, sound, rooms, other graphics, fonts, timelines and a story.

  Procrastinating about League of Legends is keeping me on track with development.

Sidetracked by gaming

  Discovered League of Legends.  Also played a lot of Defense Grid: The Awakening.  Also started a Dwarf Fortress LP blog.

  Back to business.  I tend to get sidetracked by designing gimmicks.  Most likely because I'm good at designing gimmicks.  So for now I want to make a zero gimmick zero frills platformer, absolutely nothing special at all.  No wall kicks, no climbing, no drop down platforms, no nothing.  It might sound boring, but I really need to produce ANYTHING.  I can always add "features" later.

  So I went back to my NES library and played all my platformers.  I think the game I'd like to model most after would be The Adventures of Rad Gravity.  It's pretty lame, but it's unusually stable and quite interesting.  One of the more... interesting games I've played.  No tricks whatsoever at the start.  Maybe I'll even give the game a non-distinct name like The Misadventures of Chad Tragedy or something dumb like that.

  Either way, procrastination remains my greatest enemy...  however, since starting League of Legends my procrastination of playing ranked games with bads has me back in the programming saddle.

  Till next time, Lok.