Brand new game idea. Has me really excited.
It combines all the little elements from other games I like that are otherwise not-so-good games and combines them into a coherent narrative. I do make enough legally distinct changes of course, I plan on using my own sound and graphics so there shouldn't be a problem.
The basic idea is "/story" you end up selling real estate in the underworld. You clear out dungeons, fix them up and sell them. It combined the interior decorating of Animal Crossing with the speedy violence of Ys with the massive collectionism of... well, nothing specific. Just LOTS of items.
I'd really like the graphics to be in 3D, but if I can't even draw things in 2D how am I supposed to in 3D? Since there's no physics involved I don't even need to do complicated 3D junk, I can actually code completely with a 2D mindset and just have it "display" as 3D (like early Playstation titles)
Anyways, I'm not sure what counts as copyright these days... but the PROTOTYPE title of the game is "Flippin' Hell". It's a play on words of flipping houses in the underworld theme and a common phrase.
...
So far I have a well fleshed out synthesis and drop system. In the final version I plan for there to be 7 main levels and one secret level (Based on the 7 layers of Dante's hell... how original). But the game isn't EXACTLY "level" based. Think of the levels like terrains.
In addition to selling the houses to the minions of hell, you also have to manage the neighbourhoods. The race wars between the Elves and Dwarves would make them bad neighbours. Slimes get along with everyone, but because Slimes are go-to-morons they take all the jobs, threatening higher employment. If people are unhappy they sell their house and you have to fix it up again...
... ... Unless that was your intention all along MWAHAHA! Profiting off the misery of others, the true moral code of the real estate agent.
You might not care about neighbourhood statistics or employment and might ONLY care about the money, fair enough. When you sell a house you must navigate your dialogue options to give the right impressions to the potential buyer... you'll get bonus weight for the first impression, windows grant bonuses/penalties based on the view. If you can manage to display all the goodies without letting the threats get exposed you have a sale.
There is no full disclosure in hell, but if your house as a basement that's on FIRE and they catch you before you disclose that's a massive penality... or bonus if the mob you're selling to likes your style~!
So, accrue furniture, clear a dungeon, fix up the dungeon rooms into housing, decorate the houses, sell the houses, maintain the dungeon neighbourhood and repeat until bored.
That's the idea.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Steam Summer Sale
It's not up yet.
Where is it?
...
Anyways, whenever the Steam Summer Sale finally occurs, ends, and I get out of my burnout of playing too many games, I should be sick and tired of Diablo 3 (pretty close already, good thing I got it free) by the time Torchlight 2 and Borderlands 2 come out.
After that, it's back to game development.
I even have a brand new project. An RPG this time. Notable since all my previous games have been arcade style or platformers. I'm told I might be better at designing an RPG since I need more static art than animations and I'm a mathematical genius (apparently). Moreover RPG music requires a different flare than music for other genres.
The idea is I want a game that has the collectible home decorating of Animal Crossing with the life in a dungeon reality of Dwarf Fortress.
I think you can home decorate in Elona, but I don't remember. Plus I wanted to talk about ecosystems and the "life" of a dungeon. Where do baby slimes come from? What's the weather like? How do spiders interact with skeletons? I think I'll have interaction tables between every object class, so everything will be able to interact with everything.
Crafting: I want the player to be able to craft anything out of anything. No recipe for "Long Bow", just attach anything string-like to anything wood-like (or suitable tags) and tell the game what you want it to be. An iron chain might be terrible for a bow made of almond flour, but at least you can.
Well, that's it for this short update... Lok
Where is it?
...
Anyways, whenever the Steam Summer Sale finally occurs, ends, and I get out of my burnout of playing too many games, I should be sick and tired of Diablo 3 (pretty close already, good thing I got it free) by the time Torchlight 2 and Borderlands 2 come out.
After that, it's back to game development.
I even have a brand new project. An RPG this time. Notable since all my previous games have been arcade style or platformers. I'm told I might be better at designing an RPG since I need more static art than animations and I'm a mathematical genius (apparently). Moreover RPG music requires a different flare than music for other genres.
The idea is I want a game that has the collectible home decorating of Animal Crossing with the life in a dungeon reality of Dwarf Fortress.
I think you can home decorate in Elona, but I don't remember. Plus I wanted to talk about ecosystems and the "life" of a dungeon. Where do baby slimes come from? What's the weather like? How do spiders interact with skeletons? I think I'll have interaction tables between every object class, so everything will be able to interact with everything.
Crafting: I want the player to be able to craft anything out of anything. No recipe for "Long Bow", just attach anything string-like to anything wood-like (or suitable tags) and tell the game what you want it to be. An iron chain might be terrible for a bow made of almond flour, but at least you can.
Well, that's it for this short update... Lok
Saturday, May 26, 2012
And By Hiatus I Mean Hiatus
It's just a break.
I've done more paper writing in this time than I did in the last few months. Thanks to playing an MMO (since by playing only one game I can refocus my thoughts more easily than hopping between a dozen games).
I just won't be continuing regularly scheduled updates... ignore fact that today is coincidentally Saturday and would have been a regularly scheduled update.
I should be back during the New Years, depending on how good Torchlight 2 and Borderlands 2 are.
Did A LOT of writing. I always planned on a 5 part structure, but now I have characters and more concept artwork. Still have no idea how I'm gonna sprite this though. Maybe I should forego my intended 2:1 Nintendo style tall sprite and go for a more Flash style variable sprite. Not quite sure.
The antagonist of this story is Ludodeus, the God of Gaming. (hurr hurr hurr). I picked it because a quick Google search showed the name does not exist in reality yet. The idea is the dying protagonist would be given the choice of continuing his life (in the gaming "continues" sense) and get video game like powers in order to complete his objective... only to be not satisfied with the deal at all - with constant deconstructions and regret.
And since I don't care about spoiling my own games (and no one is reading this anyways), the intention is that if you can manage to beat the game without dying (IE: Never encountering Ludodeus), which will be very very hard since you have no gaming related powers like high jump (or gaming related problems like flaming bat-tards)... with the reward being a very mundane, real life kind of ending.
To fit in with the 5 chapter set up I'd have a split paths approach. I always intended to have split paths, but had to drop it when it didn't work logically - now it does again. The three paths would be, of course, the Constructive Cycle, The Destructive Cycle, and the Mundane path. As levels change thematically between Fire, Water, Wood, Earth and Metal (according to what's being queued up at the time), with the Mundane path being reserved for the "human" ending. The Constructive cycle will be for all intents and purposes the normal canon ending with the Destructive cycle being a New Game+ (or hard mode) bonus, with the Mundane path being an alternative interpretation of the scene progression.
Projects
A copyright whore bugged me about the whole "Zelda 2 clone" thing earlier. I assure you I only mean in a thematic/design way, not a story/graphics/sound/items/logistics kinda way.
After some minor play testing with two way attack controls (Like Double Dragon) I decided to remove them. It just doesn't fit in this project. I saved the code of course so I can add it later or to another project easily.
Gaming
TERA online. I prefer the joke name for it... "True. Action. Combat. Online.", or TACO.
Finished E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy as far as I can tell, and am excited to play Nuclear Dawn again.
Time sink of the month goes to A Valley Without Wind, which my obsessive nature prevents me from quitting... Plus I like Arcen Games' music. I even caught myself playing an arrangement of this and AI War's music on my guitar when I was just playing around.
Other
I have started to lose weight again, but the health problems are piling up. I'm getting joint and muscle pain quite frequently and my tongue is white, hard and spotted... I think I has the tongue cancer, but the Doctor just says "Run"
C:\Dos\Run.bat, Lok
I've done more paper writing in this time than I did in the last few months. Thanks to playing an MMO (since by playing only one game I can refocus my thoughts more easily than hopping between a dozen games).
I just won't be continuing regularly scheduled updates... ignore fact that today is coincidentally Saturday and would have been a regularly scheduled update.
I should be back during the New Years, depending on how good Torchlight 2 and Borderlands 2 are.
Did A LOT of writing. I always planned on a 5 part structure, but now I have characters and more concept artwork. Still have no idea how I'm gonna sprite this though. Maybe I should forego my intended 2:1 Nintendo style tall sprite and go for a more Flash style variable sprite. Not quite sure.
The antagonist of this story is Ludodeus, the God of Gaming. (hurr hurr hurr). I picked it because a quick Google search showed the name does not exist in reality yet. The idea is the dying protagonist would be given the choice of continuing his life (in the gaming "continues" sense) and get video game like powers in order to complete his objective... only to be not satisfied with the deal at all - with constant deconstructions and regret.
And since I don't care about spoiling my own games (and no one is reading this anyways), the intention is that if you can manage to beat the game without dying (IE: Never encountering Ludodeus), which will be very very hard since you have no gaming related powers like high jump (or gaming related problems like flaming bat-tards)... with the reward being a very mundane, real life kind of ending.
To fit in with the 5 chapter set up I'd have a split paths approach. I always intended to have split paths, but had to drop it when it didn't work logically - now it does again. The three paths would be, of course, the Constructive Cycle, The Destructive Cycle, and the Mundane path. As levels change thematically between Fire, Water, Wood, Earth and Metal (according to what's being queued up at the time), with the Mundane path being reserved for the "human" ending. The Constructive cycle will be for all intents and purposes the normal canon ending with the Destructive cycle being a New Game+ (or hard mode) bonus, with the Mundane path being an alternative interpretation of the scene progression.
Projects
A copyright whore bugged me about the whole "Zelda 2 clone" thing earlier. I assure you I only mean in a thematic/design way, not a story/graphics/sound/items/logistics kinda way.
After some minor play testing with two way attack controls (Like Double Dragon) I decided to remove them. It just doesn't fit in this project. I saved the code of course so I can add it later or to another project easily.
Gaming
TERA online. I prefer the joke name for it... "True. Action. Combat. Online.", or TACO.
Finished E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy as far as I can tell, and am excited to play Nuclear Dawn again.
Time sink of the month goes to A Valley Without Wind, which my obsessive nature prevents me from quitting... Plus I like Arcen Games' music. I even caught myself playing an arrangement of this and AI War's music on my guitar when I was just playing around.
Other
I have started to lose weight again, but the health problems are piling up. I'm getting joint and muscle pain quite frequently and my tongue is white, hard and spotted... I think I has the tongue cancer, but the Doctor just says "Run"
C:\Dos\Run.bat, Lok
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Too Many Games Coming Out All At Once
Therefor, this blog is on hiatus.
Still gonna continue working, of course.
Hate BlogSpot's new format, Lok
Still gonna continue working, of course.
Hate BlogSpot's new format, Lok
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Dwarf Fortress Makes Me Feel Bad
I know it's not a competition, but man does he work fast.
In other news, nothing... I've been bummed since the move and haven't been working on anything.
Projects
Designcraft only, no actual work
Gaming
I bought a few games, but haven't really played them. Trying to enjoy Starcraft 2, but I don't like multiplayer games where I can't be anonymous.
Other
They sent me the wrong Bowflex. Instead of a PR3000 I got an Xtreme 2SE... I guess I got the better end of that deal, but meh.
Need Input, Lok
In other news, nothing... I've been bummed since the move and haven't been working on anything.
Projects
Designcraft only, no actual work
Gaming
I bought a few games, but haven't really played them. Trying to enjoy Starcraft 2, but I don't like multiplayer games where I can't be anonymous.
Other
They sent me the wrong Bowflex. Instead of a PR3000 I got an Xtreme 2SE... I guess I got the better end of that deal, but meh.
Need Input, Lok
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Playing With the Graphics (on paper)
I'm trying to come up with a nice UI for the main game. So far I don't have an MP/magic system even though I might want one, but I can't think of a logical way to add it to the game play since my game stands on its combat alone.
The combat engine got tweaked a lot. While at heart it still plays similar to Zelda 2, I wanted the combat to be a little faster and to rely less on blocking bullets (thrown swords). So, I thought I'd throw some Double Dragon into the mix and have two attack buttons. Since you can duck for low attacks, this makes a total of 4 instant attacks from a standing position. I made a flow chart (on paper) of possible animation transitions between each of the attack positions (including repeats for combos) and it looks good (on paper).
Using the 360 controller as a reference, this would have A button as jump, X button as attack left, B button as attack right and Y button for context sensitive action. Since I know there's gunna be people who have problems with this type of control scheme I'll add an alternate option for X as attack forward and B as attack backward relative to facing direction. Also, this is not a fighting game/beat 'em up, the combos are purely graphical - the per hit damage and speed should be standard across all attacks (like Zelda 2) so a player doesn't "have" to ever use one attack button or the other, it's purely a comfort thing.
I've decided to use my cartoons as a character basis since they're easy to pose and quite emotive. If I were to hire an animator I could just show them my model movement chart and they could probably go to town on it. Because of the character's stubby little legs it might be tricky converting to a more accurate human analogue for models, but that shouldn't come up.
The next part up would be to decide between sprites or vectors. Sprites are easy to work with, but vectors look nicer and can have smoother movements. Since my model design has very few parts (2 arms, 2 legs, the body section, the head section and the eyes) I could model them separately and just "pin" them together for animations as opposed to drawing full characters.
Just not sure yet
Projects
All paper work since I've been playing other games
Gaming
Bought Starcraft 2... ya, for $59.99 USD... as a Digital Download. I feel ripped off, but only because I've been so spoiled by the comfort of Steam sales.
Been mostly playing Just Cause 2 - The story is completely ignorable, it's all about the base raid action. There's a lot to destroy and the game world is huge, probably the largest hand crafted game world available. Hijacking helicopters doesn't get old and the enemy mix is just annoying enough to kill you some of the time while still keeping you aggressive against them.
Also, looks like Ys titles are coming to Steam... so, yeah. I might get stuck on those for a while. The 3D games are good action, but I liked the edge ramming of the original titles.
Other
Spent my entire design budget on a Bowflex PR3000... Ya, I'm irresponsible. I need a wife to keep me in check.
Or something, Lok
The combat engine got tweaked a lot. While at heart it still plays similar to Zelda 2, I wanted the combat to be a little faster and to rely less on blocking bullets (thrown swords). So, I thought I'd throw some Double Dragon into the mix and have two attack buttons. Since you can duck for low attacks, this makes a total of 4 instant attacks from a standing position. I made a flow chart (on paper) of possible animation transitions between each of the attack positions (including repeats for combos) and it looks good (on paper).
Using the 360 controller as a reference, this would have A button as jump, X button as attack left, B button as attack right and Y button for context sensitive action. Since I know there's gunna be people who have problems with this type of control scheme I'll add an alternate option for X as attack forward and B as attack backward relative to facing direction. Also, this is not a fighting game/beat 'em up, the combos are purely graphical - the per hit damage and speed should be standard across all attacks (like Zelda 2) so a player doesn't "have" to ever use one attack button or the other, it's purely a comfort thing.
I've decided to use my cartoons as a character basis since they're easy to pose and quite emotive. If I were to hire an animator I could just show them my model movement chart and they could probably go to town on it. Because of the character's stubby little legs it might be tricky converting to a more accurate human analogue for models, but that shouldn't come up.
The next part up would be to decide between sprites or vectors. Sprites are easy to work with, but vectors look nicer and can have smoother movements. Since my model design has very few parts (2 arms, 2 legs, the body section, the head section and the eyes) I could model them separately and just "pin" them together for animations as opposed to drawing full characters.
Just not sure yet
Projects
All paper work since I've been playing other games
Gaming
Bought Starcraft 2... ya, for $59.99 USD... as a Digital Download. I feel ripped off, but only because I've been so spoiled by the comfort of Steam sales.
Been mostly playing Just Cause 2 - The story is completely ignorable, it's all about the base raid action. There's a lot to destroy and the game world is huge, probably the largest hand crafted game world available. Hijacking helicopters doesn't get old and the enemy mix is just annoying enough to kill you some of the time while still keeping you aggressive against them.
Also, looks like Ys titles are coming to Steam... so, yeah. I might get stuck on those for a while. The 3D games are good action, but I liked the edge ramming of the original titles.
Other
Spent my entire design budget on a Bowflex PR3000... Ya, I'm irresponsible. I need a wife to keep me in check.
Or something, Lok
Sunday, March 11, 2012
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