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7:45am - Well, yesterday sure sucked. I can't really call it 'today' anymore even though I've been up all night. I'm going to just try and continue where I left off last time, until I have to go to sleep again.
The first and most essential scene for the game will be the Star Map. This'll either show the solar system or some sort of regional map of stars. You choose your destination, then you go to th second scene, the bridge scene, where you wait for something to happen and watch space go by.
This is a game with combat so the combat scene would be next. I'm not sure how I want the combat in this game to work yet. There are so many options for space combat especially if you throw science out the window.
Combat's probably going to be a major part of the game, so I really shouldn't make it half-assed. Either that or I should design a space game with no combat, which would be a different sort of interesting, like Kerbal Space Program.
Anyways all of this is getting my hard scifi hackles up and I'm already in a bad mood today, so I'm going to think about the other two game ideas for a while.
The action roguelike dungeon crawler idea is different from its peers in a couple ways. First, it's not bullet hell. I don't like bullet hell. Second, it uses the cycles design for mapping instead of the usual branching design you see in Issac or Gungeon.
The biggest design challenge I've had with the idea of a randomized zelda style game is the items. In all the best Zelda games you get a key item in each dungeon which is used to pass certain barriers and defeat the boss, and in subsequent dungeons those barriers can be reused for displaying mastery, or in combination with a later dungeon's key item.
So I'm not sure how to do that apart from giving the player access to all the items all the time and having the challenge be to figure out which of their many items is the key to each puzzle. I don't know if that's fun or not.
I suppose I could also deal with it by setting the item order in stone so you get them in the same order every time, but that might make each playthrough too samey.
Unexplored is a more traditional roguelike, but action, so failing and starting again is always an option. The game is more than a single run through. Also, it has puzzles that don't look like puzzles. Like a potion of fire resistance and a wall of fire are matched, but if you use the potion for something else, like fighting a dragon, or just on accident, you don't have it for the fire wall, so you either die in a fire or survive but it costs health instead of a potion.
There's something in that mechanic I just don't like. I prefer not to be able to waste my keys on the wrong doors or whatever and be unable to progress, or have to progress in a weird way. I'd rather just have one key, one door, and the key can't be lost once you've got it.
That said, Zelda usually has several types of 'keys'. Keys, Boss Keys, and Key Items. Keys open any locked door in the dungeon except the boss door, but there's always enough keys (normally) to open every door, even if it seems like you have to make a tough choice at some point. Boss keys open the boss door, and make it so they can show the boss door off early and not let you in, until you find the boss key. It makes navigation more interesting I guess. Key items are used in key puzzles, like shooting an arrow at a cyclops statue's eye or hook-shotting across a gorge. Sometimes they're more complex, but I imagine you get the idea.
Oh then there's bombs too. Bombs and arrows are expendable, and you can get more, but sometimes not without backtracking. You can use bombs to open passages, like a key item would, but usually they're optional. They're great for combat so you're not given unlimited bombs. Except in the latest Zelda game, which breaks all the rules anyways.
The latest Zelda game gives you hardly any special items or powers, and gives them to you in the tutorial. There's a heck of a lot of short dungeons but most of them are puzzles, and the big dungeons don't usually require special items they don't provide extras of.
That makes for an interesting thought though. A bunch of melee weapon options that aren't used as puzzle keys past hitting a thing that they all do fine, plus a ranged weapon you can use to hit far targets. That gives you an illusion of variety when they're functionally the same. Then there's a few key items you've always got. Grappling hook, lamp, mirror maybe, that sort of thing.
Well it's something to think about.
The dungeons themselves would be made out of 'rooms' arranged like the tiles in a game of Betrayal at the House on the Hill, or Binding of Issac, only they'd be arranged in cycles instead of branches.
To actually make this game, I'd need to make a room scene, push in the maps for it, and make a player object that can do all its things. Much easier in Godot than the Space game I was designing a bit ago. The procgen would probably be a challenge but one I'm capable of overcoming. I think it would be mostly developing and playtesting different game elements, rather than putting together lots of complex systems.
The third game idea is to make a small RPG. I'm not confident in this one because I don't feel like I've got a good story to tell, or a cool gimmick like don't hurt the monsters, or tame the monsters and have them fight eachother.
It would be trivial to copy Dragon Quest but I don't think people would buy it today the way it was back then. Or for that matter, the original Dragon Quest with all the modern conveniences like automatic stairs.
I suppose I mostly included this idea because I think if TobyFox can make a short RPG in a year and be a success, maybe I can too.
Then I go and compare with some of the other indie RPGs I've been watching like Ikenfell and Super Lesbian Animal RPG. They've been in dev for longer and have beautiful art and music and probably won't do as well as Undertale.
It's really hard to be creative in stories on a day like today, I'm better prepared to deal with mechanics than developing an interesting narrative or exciting plot.
I remember there was even a game coming out soon that uses Chrono Trigger's delightful mechanic of fighting monsters on the same field you explore in, instead of in a seperate battle scene. That's pretty art-heavy though. If I'm going to make an RPG of my own I'd probably have to make it as art light as Undertale. Very simple sprites in a retro asthetic. Black or simple backgrounds for fight scenes with lots of text embelishment. That sort of thing. Like Dragon Quest 2, 3, and 4.
Maybe I'll fish through my friends for short RPG story ideas. They might be able to come up with something I can twist.
Oh I just remembered one I came up with years and years ago, though it's actually a pretty silly idea. Ripping off Shakespeare for RPGs. It's not like people don't do it all the time, though. LOL I was thinking Romeo and Juliet but with Rabbits and Foxes in a far future setting where everybody uses swords because personal shield tech was so advanced that projectile weapons were useless. Kinda like that one episode of Stargate where O'neil hucks a knife at the Goa'uld to get through his shield.
I've been disillusioned on shields though, and I don't want to promote the idea of them anymore, so I'd have to make it something like, everybody has hyper advanced bodies, so they're too tough for modern small arms to hurt them, and heavy weapons are hard to get and illegal, so they use melee weapons along with their prodigious artificial strength to tear eachother apart instead. Doesn't that sound cool?
Of course, Romeo and Juliet has a sad ending, and I don't like that. It's a tragedy, but when you play a game you want your 'hard work' to result in a positive ending. So I'd only borrow the general principle of forbidden love between factions for it, and not the suicides. I might still include the third party 'A pox on both your houses!' person sort of thing though. We'll see.
But that's of course only if I do that idea. I'll still fish my friends' brains for other idea.
8:52am - Now I've been at this for an hour and it was pretty late in the morning when I started, so I'd better put this away and hope today is a better day.
The first and most essential scene for the game will be the Star Map. This'll either show the solar system or some sort of regional map of stars. You choose your destination, then you go to th second scene, the bridge scene, where you wait for something to happen and watch space go by.
This is a game with combat so the combat scene would be next. I'm not sure how I want the combat in this game to work yet. There are so many options for space combat especially if you throw science out the window.
Combat's probably going to be a major part of the game, so I really shouldn't make it half-assed. Either that or I should design a space game with no combat, which would be a different sort of interesting, like Kerbal Space Program.
Anyways all of this is getting my hard scifi hackles up and I'm already in a bad mood today, so I'm going to think about the other two game ideas for a while.
The action roguelike dungeon crawler idea is different from its peers in a couple ways. First, it's not bullet hell. I don't like bullet hell. Second, it uses the cycles design for mapping instead of the usual branching design you see in Issac or Gungeon.
The biggest design challenge I've had with the idea of a randomized zelda style game is the items. In all the best Zelda games you get a key item in each dungeon which is used to pass certain barriers and defeat the boss, and in subsequent dungeons those barriers can be reused for displaying mastery, or in combination with a later dungeon's key item.
So I'm not sure how to do that apart from giving the player access to all the items all the time and having the challenge be to figure out which of their many items is the key to each puzzle. I don't know if that's fun or not.
I suppose I could also deal with it by setting the item order in stone so you get them in the same order every time, but that might make each playthrough too samey.
Unexplored is a more traditional roguelike, but action, so failing and starting again is always an option. The game is more than a single run through. Also, it has puzzles that don't look like puzzles. Like a potion of fire resistance and a wall of fire are matched, but if you use the potion for something else, like fighting a dragon, or just on accident, you don't have it for the fire wall, so you either die in a fire or survive but it costs health instead of a potion.
There's something in that mechanic I just don't like. I prefer not to be able to waste my keys on the wrong doors or whatever and be unable to progress, or have to progress in a weird way. I'd rather just have one key, one door, and the key can't be lost once you've got it.
That said, Zelda usually has several types of 'keys'. Keys, Boss Keys, and Key Items. Keys open any locked door in the dungeon except the boss door, but there's always enough keys (normally) to open every door, even if it seems like you have to make a tough choice at some point. Boss keys open the boss door, and make it so they can show the boss door off early and not let you in, until you find the boss key. It makes navigation more interesting I guess. Key items are used in key puzzles, like shooting an arrow at a cyclops statue's eye or hook-shotting across a gorge. Sometimes they're more complex, but I imagine you get the idea.
Oh then there's bombs too. Bombs and arrows are expendable, and you can get more, but sometimes not without backtracking. You can use bombs to open passages, like a key item would, but usually they're optional. They're great for combat so you're not given unlimited bombs. Except in the latest Zelda game, which breaks all the rules anyways.
The latest Zelda game gives you hardly any special items or powers, and gives them to you in the tutorial. There's a heck of a lot of short dungeons but most of them are puzzles, and the big dungeons don't usually require special items they don't provide extras of.
That makes for an interesting thought though. A bunch of melee weapon options that aren't used as puzzle keys past hitting a thing that they all do fine, plus a ranged weapon you can use to hit far targets. That gives you an illusion of variety when they're functionally the same. Then there's a few key items you've always got. Grappling hook, lamp, mirror maybe, that sort of thing.
Well it's something to think about.
The dungeons themselves would be made out of 'rooms' arranged like the tiles in a game of Betrayal at the House on the Hill, or Binding of Issac, only they'd be arranged in cycles instead of branches.
To actually make this game, I'd need to make a room scene, push in the maps for it, and make a player object that can do all its things. Much easier in Godot than the Space game I was designing a bit ago. The procgen would probably be a challenge but one I'm capable of overcoming. I think it would be mostly developing and playtesting different game elements, rather than putting together lots of complex systems.
The third game idea is to make a small RPG. I'm not confident in this one because I don't feel like I've got a good story to tell, or a cool gimmick like don't hurt the monsters, or tame the monsters and have them fight eachother.
It would be trivial to copy Dragon Quest but I don't think people would buy it today the way it was back then. Or for that matter, the original Dragon Quest with all the modern conveniences like automatic stairs.
I suppose I mostly included this idea because I think if TobyFox can make a short RPG in a year and be a success, maybe I can too.
Then I go and compare with some of the other indie RPGs I've been watching like Ikenfell and Super Lesbian Animal RPG. They've been in dev for longer and have beautiful art and music and probably won't do as well as Undertale.
It's really hard to be creative in stories on a day like today, I'm better prepared to deal with mechanics than developing an interesting narrative or exciting plot.
I remember there was even a game coming out soon that uses Chrono Trigger's delightful mechanic of fighting monsters on the same field you explore in, instead of in a seperate battle scene. That's pretty art-heavy though. If I'm going to make an RPG of my own I'd probably have to make it as art light as Undertale. Very simple sprites in a retro asthetic. Black or simple backgrounds for fight scenes with lots of text embelishment. That sort of thing. Like Dragon Quest 2, 3, and 4.
Maybe I'll fish through my friends for short RPG story ideas. They might be able to come up with something I can twist.
Oh I just remembered one I came up with years and years ago, though it's actually a pretty silly idea. Ripping off Shakespeare for RPGs. It's not like people don't do it all the time, though. LOL I was thinking Romeo and Juliet but with Rabbits and Foxes in a far future setting where everybody uses swords because personal shield tech was so advanced that projectile weapons were useless. Kinda like that one episode of Stargate where O'neil hucks a knife at the Goa'uld to get through his shield.
I've been disillusioned on shields though, and I don't want to promote the idea of them anymore, so I'd have to make it something like, everybody has hyper advanced bodies, so they're too tough for modern small arms to hurt them, and heavy weapons are hard to get and illegal, so they use melee weapons along with their prodigious artificial strength to tear eachother apart instead. Doesn't that sound cool?
Of course, Romeo and Juliet has a sad ending, and I don't like that. It's a tragedy, but when you play a game you want your 'hard work' to result in a positive ending. So I'd only borrow the general principle of forbidden love between factions for it, and not the suicides. I might still include the third party 'A pox on both your houses!' person sort of thing though. We'll see.
But that's of course only if I do that idea. I'll still fish my friends' brains for other idea.
8:52am - Now I've been at this for an hour and it was pretty late in the morning when I started, so I'd better put this away and hope today is a better day.
