Hail Wanderers!
My sincere apologies for not making a post in so long. My life has been a little hectic, what with graduating from college and trying to get a foothold on my next step in life.
But enough with that! Long story short, I'm back, and will be updating the blog regularly until further notice (that eventual notice being that I, happily, have a job and, sadly, won't be able to devote as much time, if any, to my side projects).
Until that happens, my goal is to make as much progress with the dungeon crawler as I can. In fact, significant progress has already been made! I've overhauled the dialogue system and added a proper UI (many thanks to Alexander Beauchesne from the NeverYear Games team for his help with both), along with making changes to combat and the core experience of the game to get it better in line with my original intent.
Which, because it got a little lost as I tried new ideas over the months, I feel like I should repeat again. I'm going to go more in depth in a later post, but for now let's just leave it at this:
I intend to make a turn based RPG with a focus on changing and engaging combat scenarios, player-NPC interactions, player customization and play style choices, and a shifting game world over a slowly expanding game loop.
I'm going to expand on how I intend to accomplish those goals, why I want to make this game in the first place, and what you all can expect from it when (and yes, I really do mean when) it is finished.
Until then, my sincere apologies again for the lapse in communication, and I hope to share this journey with you all!
- Charles (Guardian Soul)
Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Friday, January 16, 2015
Update 1/16/2015
Hail Wanderers!
A new year, a new semester, and in my case at least, a new team! I'm very grateful to the wonderful people at Neveryear Games and look forward to working with them on We Love Nuclear Armageddon. I will be taking the role of the main systems designer, working alongside the narrative designer and reporting to our lead designer and producer throughout the semester. Primarily I'll be working on adding faction specific upgrades for all of the buildings currently in the game, but I'll also be doing some work on the narrative and, at least for the short term, working on a re-balance for the economy in the game.
Right now, the game's economy is balanced. It works well, and all the various costs of creating buildings, nukes, and activating shields, along with overcharging towers, all work very well. The economy runs off an interesting system were it is impossible to stockpile resources. Instead, the player has a max value for the two resources (uranium and chromium) that they generate each level. Because of this the player is encouraged to use as much resources as possible in their turn, as any left over resources won't carry over to the next turn. The system works very well, and that's not the area that I'm going to be looking at for balance. What I want to do is to try and streamline the economy some. Right now, many of the buildings and the nukes use a combination of the two resources, so it can be hard to figure out how many buildings that produce each resource the player should build. This issue is compounded by the immense importance the game places on the position of buildings on the player's planet (the planets rotate, and both shields and nukes work based on an area of effect, so it is important to keep in mind what is next to what) and the fast pace of gameplay. It would be ideal for the selection process of a building to be as simple as possible so that the player can focus more thought onto the placement of the building or other tactical and strategic decisions. Ideally, I would like to have chromium be a sort of defensive resource (used to build buildings and power shields) and then have uranium be a more offensive resource (used to build nukes and overcharge towers). I'll probably keep it that nukes require both resources to build, but I'll experiment on a few iterations of the offensive/defensive split over the next few days and see where it leads me.
In other news, I'm part of the way done with yet another revision of the lore for the dungeon crawler, and intend to add more to the combat system. I want to add different combat states (grappled, etc) that will present different options to the player, with the intent of both making the skills enemies will use more diverse and also presenting more interesting and unique combat scenarios to the player. I'll have more information about that as I continue to work on it.
Finally, (and quickly), I'm taking a creative writing class this semester, so expect to see some short stories and the like appear on the blog from time to time (I'll spare you all the poetry, don't worry). I'll probably have to do some messing around with how I want to present the stories, as the standard blog posts are pretty terrible for presenting long blocks of text, but we'll see how it goes.
Finally finally, I'm going to be working on a portfolio website over the coming semester as well. No real details as of yet, but I'll still maintain the blog as the main source of updates for the projects I'm working on, etc, and use the portfolio to showcase the work that I've done.
There are lots of exciting things happening in the coming months, and I look forward to sharing them here.
As always, until next time,
Guardian Soul
A new year, a new semester, and in my case at least, a new team! I'm very grateful to the wonderful people at Neveryear Games and look forward to working with them on We Love Nuclear Armageddon. I will be taking the role of the main systems designer, working alongside the narrative designer and reporting to our lead designer and producer throughout the semester. Primarily I'll be working on adding faction specific upgrades for all of the buildings currently in the game, but I'll also be doing some work on the narrative and, at least for the short term, working on a re-balance for the economy in the game.
Right now, the game's economy is balanced. It works well, and all the various costs of creating buildings, nukes, and activating shields, along with overcharging towers, all work very well. The economy runs off an interesting system were it is impossible to stockpile resources. Instead, the player has a max value for the two resources (uranium and chromium) that they generate each level. Because of this the player is encouraged to use as much resources as possible in their turn, as any left over resources won't carry over to the next turn. The system works very well, and that's not the area that I'm going to be looking at for balance. What I want to do is to try and streamline the economy some. Right now, many of the buildings and the nukes use a combination of the two resources, so it can be hard to figure out how many buildings that produce each resource the player should build. This issue is compounded by the immense importance the game places on the position of buildings on the player's planet (the planets rotate, and both shields and nukes work based on an area of effect, so it is important to keep in mind what is next to what) and the fast pace of gameplay. It would be ideal for the selection process of a building to be as simple as possible so that the player can focus more thought onto the placement of the building or other tactical and strategic decisions. Ideally, I would like to have chromium be a sort of defensive resource (used to build buildings and power shields) and then have uranium be a more offensive resource (used to build nukes and overcharge towers). I'll probably keep it that nukes require both resources to build, but I'll experiment on a few iterations of the offensive/defensive split over the next few days and see where it leads me.
In other news, I'm part of the way done with yet another revision of the lore for the dungeon crawler, and intend to add more to the combat system. I want to add different combat states (grappled, etc) that will present different options to the player, with the intent of both making the skills enemies will use more diverse and also presenting more interesting and unique combat scenarios to the player. I'll have more information about that as I continue to work on it.
Finally, (and quickly), I'm taking a creative writing class this semester, so expect to see some short stories and the like appear on the blog from time to time (I'll spare you all the poetry, don't worry). I'll probably have to do some messing around with how I want to present the stories, as the standard blog posts are pretty terrible for presenting long blocks of text, but we'll see how it goes.
Finally finally, I'm going to be working on a portfolio website over the coming semester as well. No real details as of yet, but I'll still maintain the blog as the main source of updates for the projects I'm working on, etc, and use the portfolio to showcase the work that I've done.
There are lots of exciting things happening in the coming months, and I look forward to sharing them here.
As always, until next time,
Guardian Soul
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Update 10/12/2014
Hail Wanderers!
Back to shorter posts for this week. Most of the work has gone into locking in the main systems we already have for Treevolution, and testing those systems so that we know what areas we have to refine. That has taken up the majority of this week and I have to say, the results have been quite informative. The game continues to grow by leaps and bounds, as we have the core gameplay experience for the first tier of the game all but completely worked out and implemented, with a fair amount of the balancing completed. Though we haven't fully blocked out the remaining systems we would like to implement, we have a rough idea of how the latter game stages will look, as outlined by the chart below. Next week, we will continue to implement and test these new systems, building off the foundations we have established this past week and bringing the core gameplay experience for the game closer to completion.
That, and we're going to get as much testing done on our game as possible.
In other news, I have a rough version of the new dungeon exploration system for the Dungeon Crawler done, though I need to actually mock up a dungeon to test the system. I expect that there will be many iterations before the system is complete, but progress is being made, even though it is on a somewhat sporadic basis.
Until next time,
Guardian Soul
Back to shorter posts for this week. Most of the work has gone into locking in the main systems we already have for Treevolution, and testing those systems so that we know what areas we have to refine. That has taken up the majority of this week and I have to say, the results have been quite informative. The game continues to grow by leaps and bounds, as we have the core gameplay experience for the first tier of the game all but completely worked out and implemented, with a fair amount of the balancing completed. Though we haven't fully blocked out the remaining systems we would like to implement, we have a rough idea of how the latter game stages will look, as outlined by the chart below. Next week, we will continue to implement and test these new systems, building off the foundations we have established this past week and bringing the core gameplay experience for the game closer to completion.
That, and we're going to get as much testing done on our game as possible.
In other news, I have a rough version of the new dungeon exploration system for the Dungeon Crawler done, though I need to actually mock up a dungeon to test the system. I expect that there will be many iterations before the system is complete, but progress is being made, even though it is on a somewhat sporadic basis.
Until next time,
Guardian Soul
Sunday, October 5, 2014
Update 10/5/2014
Hail Wanderers!
Somewhat thin post today, partially because some of the work that was completed this week will end up going unused, but that's not necessarily a bad thing! Anyway, on to the news.
I spent some time this week working on the farm system for The Last Days of Greys (aka the sprite game) and had the mechanics for that fleshed out. The player would upgrade the core trees using resources obtained in each level, allowing them to grow more seeds for less resources and upgrade how powerful the effects of those seeds were. The trees would consume water (which would be distributed by the player to the trees from a pool that would regenerate over time) to create new seeds, and the amount and type of seeds that would be created would depend on how much time had passed since the player had last returned to the farm, which would in turn be measured based on how many area transitions the player had passed through.
In addition, I had created a system for crossbreeding the seed types with each other (a feature that was often mentioned in test sessions, in class discussions, and in conversations among the team). In early versions, entirely new seed types would be created as a result of these crossbreeds, but that eventually became too cumbersome both from a systems design and a level design standpoint, and I shifted focus to instead applying modifiers to the effect of each seed type based on what other element the seed was mixed with. For example, seeds that were modified by the air element tended to have their range expanded, allowing the effects to function as projectiles or to extend beyond their normal area of influence. These crossbreeds would be discovered by selecting a base seed, selecting an element to cross it with, giving it some water, and then letting it sit at the farm and (hopefully) germinate into a new seed type which would then start to grow from the appropriate core tree.
That all being said, after further exploration into each game concept, the team and I made the decision to go ahead and devote our full efforts onto Treevolution (formerly known simply as the tree game). For that game, my efforts have focused on the new biodiversity system that we have just recently implemented into the game.
The main idea behind the system is that as both players create more entities within the game world (be they trees, grass, animals, what have you) they will increase the biodiversity of the overall ecosystem, thus unlocking more entities in the game world as the ecosystem is now robust enough to 'support' them. This will hopefully add a strong sense of progression to the game, and also has many interesting implications as the biodiversity level can actually go down if too many entities are destroyed without enough taking their place.
For the moment, I've been working on the first level of this new system which adds two new entities and one new ability to the game, birds, bugs, and seeds.
Bugs are a non-controlled entity that spawn randomly on trees. When on a tree, they burrow through the tree's back and eat the leaves, dealing one point of damage to the tree every turn. This is countered with...
The birds. Birds will eat any bugs that are adjacent to the tile that they currently occupy, saving any associated trees from being chewed hollow. The players can not directly control the birds, but they can attract them by having their trees grow...
Seeds! But not the sort that grow into the ground. These seeds instead serve as a beacon of sorts that draws in any birds on the map. The birds will fly over and roost in the tree that produced the seeds, ridding it, and its neighbors, of any pesky insects.
Interestingly enough, these three systems, while designed to work together, have implications on systems outside of this cluster. Just as one example, bees, which are a higher tier entity that are attracted to flowers (grown from grass) and give an energy boost to nearby trees, may also fall prey to the hungry birds. Once we have more of the different systems fully fleshed out, tested, and implemented, I plan on making a food web of sorts that will show the various interactions between the entities in Treevolution. The end goal is to create enough simple and interconnecting interactions, just as in a real ecosystem, that the players will have a great depth of strategic options available to them.
Lastly, and on a rather unrelated note, I've finally completed the revised combat system for the dungeon cralwer! It still needs to be tested, which may result in some (hopefully minor) changes, but I'm much happier with the direction that the system has moved in and hope that it can more successfully convey the experience I was aiming to create with that game. Next on the list of things to do when I have time is redesign the dungeon system. I already have several interesting ideas that I want to test out, so look forward to hearing about them sometime in the future (though I'm not sure exactly when).
Until then,
Guardian Soul
Somewhat thin post today, partially because some of the work that was completed this week will end up going unused, but that's not necessarily a bad thing! Anyway, on to the news.
I spent some time this week working on the farm system for The Last Days of Greys (aka the sprite game) and had the mechanics for that fleshed out. The player would upgrade the core trees using resources obtained in each level, allowing them to grow more seeds for less resources and upgrade how powerful the effects of those seeds were. The trees would consume water (which would be distributed by the player to the trees from a pool that would regenerate over time) to create new seeds, and the amount and type of seeds that would be created would depend on how much time had passed since the player had last returned to the farm, which would in turn be measured based on how many area transitions the player had passed through.
In addition, I had created a system for crossbreeding the seed types with each other (a feature that was often mentioned in test sessions, in class discussions, and in conversations among the team). In early versions, entirely new seed types would be created as a result of these crossbreeds, but that eventually became too cumbersome both from a systems design and a level design standpoint, and I shifted focus to instead applying modifiers to the effect of each seed type based on what other element the seed was mixed with. For example, seeds that were modified by the air element tended to have their range expanded, allowing the effects to function as projectiles or to extend beyond their normal area of influence. These crossbreeds would be discovered by selecting a base seed, selecting an element to cross it with, giving it some water, and then letting it sit at the farm and (hopefully) germinate into a new seed type which would then start to grow from the appropriate core tree.
That all being said, after further exploration into each game concept, the team and I made the decision to go ahead and devote our full efforts onto Treevolution (formerly known simply as the tree game). For that game, my efforts have focused on the new biodiversity system that we have just recently implemented into the game.
The main idea behind the system is that as both players create more entities within the game world (be they trees, grass, animals, what have you) they will increase the biodiversity of the overall ecosystem, thus unlocking more entities in the game world as the ecosystem is now robust enough to 'support' them. This will hopefully add a strong sense of progression to the game, and also has many interesting implications as the biodiversity level can actually go down if too many entities are destroyed without enough taking their place.
For the moment, I've been working on the first level of this new system which adds two new entities and one new ability to the game, birds, bugs, and seeds.
Bugs are a non-controlled entity that spawn randomly on trees. When on a tree, they burrow through the tree's back and eat the leaves, dealing one point of damage to the tree every turn. This is countered with...
The birds. Birds will eat any bugs that are adjacent to the tile that they currently occupy, saving any associated trees from being chewed hollow. The players can not directly control the birds, but they can attract them by having their trees grow...
Seeds! But not the sort that grow into the ground. These seeds instead serve as a beacon of sorts that draws in any birds on the map. The birds will fly over and roost in the tree that produced the seeds, ridding it, and its neighbors, of any pesky insects.
Interestingly enough, these three systems, while designed to work together, have implications on systems outside of this cluster. Just as one example, bees, which are a higher tier entity that are attracted to flowers (grown from grass) and give an energy boost to nearby trees, may also fall prey to the hungry birds. Once we have more of the different systems fully fleshed out, tested, and implemented, I plan on making a food web of sorts that will show the various interactions between the entities in Treevolution. The end goal is to create enough simple and interconnecting interactions, just as in a real ecosystem, that the players will have a great depth of strategic options available to them.
Lastly, and on a rather unrelated note, I've finally completed the revised combat system for the dungeon cralwer! It still needs to be tested, which may result in some (hopefully minor) changes, but I'm much happier with the direction that the system has moved in and hope that it can more successfully convey the experience I was aiming to create with that game. Next on the list of things to do when I have time is redesign the dungeon system. I already have several interesting ideas that I want to test out, so look forward to hearing about them sometime in the future (though I'm not sure exactly when).
Until then,
Guardian Soul
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Update 9/28/2014
Hail Wanderers!
Shorter update this week as most of the work has gone into preparing for the stage challenge and not into design work, but I would like to share the visual design document showing the systems interaction between the various environmental objects and seed types in the sprite game.
The intent here is for the seed powers for each element to be broken up among a few simple concepts that have simple interactions with the other concepts. So, for example, an earth leaf seed can be burnt by fire or it can be blown around by air to create a platform. These interactions will remain the same no matter what other modifiers the leaf seed may have, so even upgraded versions of the seed will still have the same basic interactions. For example, an upgraded fire flame seed may be able to burn things at range, but it will still be doing the same basic interactions as its lower tier cousins. This will hopefully keep the amount of code needed to a minimum while also allowing easier level and systems design as in both cases the designer will know exactly what effect on the level each seed will have without having to worry about the specifics of the seed type used. So to take another example, the designer of the level may create a bramble that is blocking the path knowing that the player would have to burn it, and knowing that they would have to use a flare seed to do so, but it would be up to the player exactly how that may happen. They could get close to the bramble and burn it with a basic flare seed, or use a high tier flare seed to burn it from range, or use a vine seed to connect to the bramble and then burn the vine, taking the bramble along with it. This should allow each player a great degree of control over how they will play the game, while not requiring the programmer or designers to have to plan for every single possible course of action.
As stated above, we are challenging to go forward to stage 2, so expect an update on the blog once we know the results of the challenge detailing what we will be working on from there.
Until then,
Guardian Soul
Shorter update this week as most of the work has gone into preparing for the stage challenge and not into design work, but I would like to share the visual design document showing the systems interaction between the various environmental objects and seed types in the sprite game.
The intent here is for the seed powers for each element to be broken up among a few simple concepts that have simple interactions with the other concepts. So, for example, an earth leaf seed can be burnt by fire or it can be blown around by air to create a platform. These interactions will remain the same no matter what other modifiers the leaf seed may have, so even upgraded versions of the seed will still have the same basic interactions. For example, an upgraded fire flame seed may be able to burn things at range, but it will still be doing the same basic interactions as its lower tier cousins. This will hopefully keep the amount of code needed to a minimum while also allowing easier level and systems design as in both cases the designer will know exactly what effect on the level each seed will have without having to worry about the specifics of the seed type used. So to take another example, the designer of the level may create a bramble that is blocking the path knowing that the player would have to burn it, and knowing that they would have to use a flare seed to do so, but it would be up to the player exactly how that may happen. They could get close to the bramble and burn it with a basic flare seed, or use a high tier flare seed to burn it from range, or use a vine seed to connect to the bramble and then burn the vine, taking the bramble along with it. This should allow each player a great degree of control over how they will play the game, while not requiring the programmer or designers to have to plan for every single possible course of action.
As stated above, we are challenging to go forward to stage 2, so expect an update on the blog once we know the results of the challenge detailing what we will be working on from there.
Until then,
Guardian Soul
Sunday, August 31, 2014
News and Tree Game Details 8/31/2014
Hail Wanderers!
Lots of news on various subjects to go over today, in addition to some details on the new project that I am working on.
To start, a much belated update on the status of the game that I mentioned way back in the Update 6/16/2014 post. The plan is to have the game complete over the course of the next two or so months, so expect to see more work and updates there in addition to the soon to be completed game.
Secondly, expect to see weekly updates, if not more, on this blog. Most of these blog posts will focus on the new game that I, and a team of excellent people, are working on but I will still try to get some work in on the dungeon crawler in my spare time.
Now, a little bit of background on this new game that I keep mentioning. I'm working with a team to, over the course of the coming semester, create a vertical slice of a full game. The game will go through 5 stages of development, with blog posts accompanying each stage. The first stage, and the stage that my team and I are currently working on, is to explore and develop several ideas that will eventually become the foundation for our game.
The first concept that we are working on is a tree based exploratory strategy game. The intent of the game is for the player to grow and shepherd a forest of different tree species and accomplish several goals while adapting to an ever changing environment and discovering new and unexpected types of trees. The main focus of the game is on player centric exploration and discovery of both the game world and the trees that the player is using to interact with it.
As already mentioned, the core experience of the game is discovering new and interesting varieties of trees as the trees either change and grow under the player's direction or as a result of changes in the game environment. We are in no way limiting ourselves with the boundaries of reality, and a large part of the experience is discovering unknown tree types, finding out what exactly they are, and then eventually making use of them in the overall strategy of the game. We intend for the game to be easy to pick up and play at a basic level, but have complex enough systems that those who want a more strategy focused experience have plenty of depth to work with.
The game takes place in a 3D environment from an isometric perspective with the trees themselves being shown in 2D. The art direction is certainly headed towards the fantastic and colorful, with a focus on vibrant colors.
The game is projected to be released for iOS and Android tablets and phones.
The concept is admittedly still in the early stages with many of the specific details still being worked out, and this may not be the idea that we eventually decide to work on, but expect to see more details about this and other concepts in the coming days. Sometime early next week I'll post again either talking more about the core systems of the tree game or about another one of the game concepts.
Until then,
Guardian Soul
Lots of news on various subjects to go over today, in addition to some details on the new project that I am working on.
To start, a much belated update on the status of the game that I mentioned way back in the Update 6/16/2014 post. The plan is to have the game complete over the course of the next two or so months, so expect to see more work and updates there in addition to the soon to be completed game.
Secondly, expect to see weekly updates, if not more, on this blog. Most of these blog posts will focus on the new game that I, and a team of excellent people, are working on but I will still try to get some work in on the dungeon crawler in my spare time.
Now, a little bit of background on this new game that I keep mentioning. I'm working with a team to, over the course of the coming semester, create a vertical slice of a full game. The game will go through 5 stages of development, with blog posts accompanying each stage. The first stage, and the stage that my team and I are currently working on, is to explore and develop several ideas that will eventually become the foundation for our game.
The first concept that we are working on is a tree based exploratory strategy game. The intent of the game is for the player to grow and shepherd a forest of different tree species and accomplish several goals while adapting to an ever changing environment and discovering new and unexpected types of trees. The main focus of the game is on player centric exploration and discovery of both the game world and the trees that the player is using to interact with it.
As already mentioned, the core experience of the game is discovering new and interesting varieties of trees as the trees either change and grow under the player's direction or as a result of changes in the game environment. We are in no way limiting ourselves with the boundaries of reality, and a large part of the experience is discovering unknown tree types, finding out what exactly they are, and then eventually making use of them in the overall strategy of the game. We intend for the game to be easy to pick up and play at a basic level, but have complex enough systems that those who want a more strategy focused experience have plenty of depth to work with.
The game takes place in a 3D environment from an isometric perspective with the trees themselves being shown in 2D. The art direction is certainly headed towards the fantastic and colorful, with a focus on vibrant colors.
The game is projected to be released for iOS and Android tablets and phones.
The concept is admittedly still in the early stages with many of the specific details still being worked out, and this may not be the idea that we eventually decide to work on, but expect to see more details about this and other concepts in the coming days. Sometime early next week I'll post again either talking more about the core systems of the tree game or about another one of the game concepts.
Until then,
Guardian Soul
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