![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
7:57am - Well it's another day and I'm feeling better on this one.
I've been thinking about my RogueLike project and how it's basically a reduction of a grander project I want to build from it. I worry somewhat that by reducing the scope I'm limiting what can grow from it. Like, I could've used RogueSharp to do a game much faster than what I'm doing on my own, but it couldn't grow into what I need later without some major restructuring after the first game was done.
So I've been thinking, instead of designing a small game that looks like part of what I want to build, I should design the whole game and take my reduction from THAT.
So, that's what I'm going to try to do now.
THE BIG GAME
The Big Game takes its inspiration from the middle Ultima games, 4 & 5, as well as the Mystery Dungeon series, Dwarf Fortress, and Skyrim.
The idea is to make a large world with less focus on a major plot and more focus on many microplots and adventures. I think most people would agree that the side-adventures in Skyrim and Oblivion were more entertaining than the main quests in those games. The Big Game will play like a Roguelike in a large world without large scale time crises. Any time crises that do arise do so as part of a microplot, and failing them isn't the end of the world.
The Big Game takes place in the World of Thardomhainn, which I've outlined in previous posts somewhat. I've done some dives into the magic, biology, and culture of the world, but not much about history and geography. I feel like I really should start drawing maps and writing histories but that's pretty far ahead of the reduced game project I'm working on now.
Gameplay has several modes in The Big Game. I'm not sure at this point where the player enters the world, but there are three primary levels of exploration. The World Map is the highest, where you're traveling between major locations. Sites are the next level, which are mostly things like villages, towns and cities. Then there's the dungeons, where most of the action happens.
On the World Map the player can have random encounters, and maybe viewable encounters as well. You might discover a hidden site or be ambushed by someone, or you might see other travelers. I'm not 100% sure I want to incude other travelers on the world map, but if I do they'll probably be like Mount and Blade, where you can only see them from so far away and they may or may not react to you. The World Map will also have ships and maybe airships you can use to get around the water.
In sites you're on closer to a 1:1 scale; or as close as tile based games get anyways. They could really be anything, ruins or towns or shrines or cities. They're someplace you can explore and interact in ways that are different from the world map. What those ways are I'll have to flesh out more when the game is designed. But in the reduction of my Roguelike project, there's a site and a randomized dungeon, but no World Map. So there's that to keep in mind.
Dungeons can be sculpted or randomized or a combination of the two. They are the primary locations of adventure in The Big Game. You get quests or treasure hunting tips from sites, and then explore a dungeon to find the McGuffin or the loot or whatever.
Progression in The Big Game is slow and shallow. The gameplay is focused around exploration of microplots, sites and dungeons, and if your character got significantly stronger from each of them, there'd be very little to challenge you pretty fast, or I'd have to make it like the Elder Scrolls games and have the enemies level up to match you, and personally I think that's worse. XD
It occurs to me that I was going to have progression go faster in my Roguelike Project than I intend to have it happen in The Big Game. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or a good thing though. Like, this game is seperate from the big game, and you go from zero to hero, sort of, in just one site/dungeon. So it would be weird if you didn't get all the way to the top in this. But it's also supposed to be part of the larger world, and so I'm not sure what to do...
8:49am - I need to take a break. The sun in my room is driving me a little crazylike. XD
11:26am - I ended up taking a nap for an hour or so then playing Dark Cloud for a while. Now I think I'm going to pack up and go to the McDonalds to work for the rest of the day.
I've been thinking about my RogueLike project and how it's basically a reduction of a grander project I want to build from it. I worry somewhat that by reducing the scope I'm limiting what can grow from it. Like, I could've used RogueSharp to do a game much faster than what I'm doing on my own, but it couldn't grow into what I need later without some major restructuring after the first game was done.
So I've been thinking, instead of designing a small game that looks like part of what I want to build, I should design the whole game and take my reduction from THAT.
So, that's what I'm going to try to do now.
THE BIG GAME
The Big Game takes its inspiration from the middle Ultima games, 4 & 5, as well as the Mystery Dungeon series, Dwarf Fortress, and Skyrim.
The idea is to make a large world with less focus on a major plot and more focus on many microplots and adventures. I think most people would agree that the side-adventures in Skyrim and Oblivion were more entertaining than the main quests in those games. The Big Game will play like a Roguelike in a large world without large scale time crises. Any time crises that do arise do so as part of a microplot, and failing them isn't the end of the world.
The Big Game takes place in the World of Thardomhainn, which I've outlined in previous posts somewhat. I've done some dives into the magic, biology, and culture of the world, but not much about history and geography. I feel like I really should start drawing maps and writing histories but that's pretty far ahead of the reduced game project I'm working on now.
Gameplay has several modes in The Big Game. I'm not sure at this point where the player enters the world, but there are three primary levels of exploration. The World Map is the highest, where you're traveling between major locations. Sites are the next level, which are mostly things like villages, towns and cities. Then there's the dungeons, where most of the action happens.
On the World Map the player can have random encounters, and maybe viewable encounters as well. You might discover a hidden site or be ambushed by someone, or you might see other travelers. I'm not 100% sure I want to incude other travelers on the world map, but if I do they'll probably be like Mount and Blade, where you can only see them from so far away and they may or may not react to you. The World Map will also have ships and maybe airships you can use to get around the water.
In sites you're on closer to a 1:1 scale; or as close as tile based games get anyways. They could really be anything, ruins or towns or shrines or cities. They're someplace you can explore and interact in ways that are different from the world map. What those ways are I'll have to flesh out more when the game is designed. But in the reduction of my Roguelike project, there's a site and a randomized dungeon, but no World Map. So there's that to keep in mind.
Dungeons can be sculpted or randomized or a combination of the two. They are the primary locations of adventure in The Big Game. You get quests or treasure hunting tips from sites, and then explore a dungeon to find the McGuffin or the loot or whatever.
Progression in The Big Game is slow and shallow. The gameplay is focused around exploration of microplots, sites and dungeons, and if your character got significantly stronger from each of them, there'd be very little to challenge you pretty fast, or I'd have to make it like the Elder Scrolls games and have the enemies level up to match you, and personally I think that's worse. XD
It occurs to me that I was going to have progression go faster in my Roguelike Project than I intend to have it happen in The Big Game. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or a good thing though. Like, this game is seperate from the big game, and you go from zero to hero, sort of, in just one site/dungeon. So it would be weird if you didn't get all the way to the top in this. But it's also supposed to be part of the larger world, and so I'm not sure what to do...
8:49am - I need to take a break. The sun in my room is driving me a little crazylike. XD
11:26am - I ended up taking a nap for an hour or so then playing Dark Cloud for a while. Now I think I'm going to pack up and go to the McDonalds to work for the rest of the day.
