In my mind there's a bit of a conflict between your first milestone ("Permanent removal of advertisements") and your highest pledge level where you'll prominently link the sponsor on the home page. To me there isn't much (or necessarily any) difference between a sponsorship link and an ad.
I don't want any donors (or potential donors) to be disappointed/disillusioned by this.
Maybe you can think of a footnote to add to the first milestone or something.
Keep up the good work! I hope this becomes a significant income stream.
Love it! I opened the .xm file in milkytracker and just stared at it for at least 5 plays through. Actually, I cried a bit too. Maybe I need to get back into making music.
What program did you use to make this?
About 5 years ago I tought my self milkytracker and made background music for Variations on Rockdodger. Awesome to what you've done, what the wave-forms look like, etc.
Also, if I was hunting for a game engine, I'd want one that was used to create a good game. I don't see how a game engine could be well rounded or well tested without being used to make a good game.
I say focus on the game, but stick with the idea of developing both... just use the game as the focus, and have the game development tell you what features you should add to the engine.
I think the game engine can only be truely flexible and appropriate for making a variety of games once you make the second game using it (and expand it further so it can support both games.)
Glad you're thinking about this :)
Thanks for all your work! You're one of by big reasons for finally signing up for flattr.com
What's a good way to offer offer the user some fun choices, and make enough variation in playing experience so you could play the same game again, without letting the user easily make choises that they will feel screwed over by later?
I want people thinking "wow, that was fun, I wonder what it'd be like to play again as a sourceress" not "man, if only I hadn't put a couple early advancement points into magic I'd actually have a good warrior"
I'm sure there are many good solutions to this. I'm curious what it'd be like if you only got better at what you practice. In Discworld Mud you randomly get skill advances in what you're doing (this system is called the Task Master). The amount of skill advances you get from the Task Master is less than you get in the usual way (of gaining xp from your actions (mostly fighting usually) and spending it on the skill of your choice. An interesting thing about the Task Master in Discworld Mud is that you are more likely to advance this way if you are doing something at a level that is challenging, eg fighting with a weapon that is heavy enough that you can only hit 50-70% of the time with. And of course leveling up skills in this way is much less likely if you already have a high level. This mirrors the real world in a cool way.
Discworld Mud is designed to be played for hundreds to thousands of hours, so it makes sense to me that it's more complex than Flare. For a game like flare (the size it is right now) I'd probably only ask the player one thing ever: Which of these (4 or so) character classes do you want? And then just tell them when they've gotten enough fighting experience to be able to use the next level of gear. And hide the weapons that only other classes will ever be able to use. But flare is aiming to be a longer game, so maybe more complexity/options is appropriate. Also I think Clint wants to build/test some standard RPM elements in the engine :)
mdwh: I've never heard of an RPG that did not enable you to advance way quicker in the beginning.
I think it's good to give levels/advancement more quickly in the beginning to help get the player excited about the game, and learning the advancement system. (Which I assume is why just about every RPG does in this way.) Also this method mimics reality. We learn very quickly at first, but it takes years to become a true master.
Hehe I wasn't thinking you'd create 50 hours worth of levels yourself. I'm hoping others will help with content. That said it is a good idea to have a short-term goal that you can do even if not much help comes along.
Also, to clarify, I mean a game that you can enjoy for 50 hours, including getting lost, doodling around, playing good parts again to level up a little, etc. Playing several parts again to try to remember where that door to the area you didn't go to yet was, or looking around for something. So what I meant for a 50+ hour game could be completed in 15 hours if you know what you're doing.
My basic point isn't "please make me a huge game by Thursday" but "please make sure the advancement system scales well to longer games", so as the game grows over the years it doesn't become more broken.
manwesulimo2004, that sounds interesting (and more complex), but it sounds like the cost of your next stat upgrade (regardless of whether it's a level 1 upgrade or a level 10) scales up exponentially. Which doesn't address my concern about an early stat upgrade choice making it take hours longer to get level 10 in something.
Thanks for your comments! I'm glad people are reading and thinking about this.
Re-spec is an interesting option. I forgot about that.
As for "jack of all trades, master of none", with my suggestion, you could do this, but I don't think it would be optimal. It'd take a while, and you wouldn't be good at anything... like fighting.
I think the optimal strategy is to choose how you're going to kill things (eg sword and shield) and then pump loads of xp into the skills that work with that strategie (eg physical and defense).
Then if you want to spend the 8 hours of XP on getting enough magic to do the teleport spell, then go for it.
'course this requires you to ballance the game knowing that any character class can get the teleport spell and still be good at fighting.
This is making me realise that discworld mud (the game I play a lot that has this sort of advancement scheme) has two other things that encourage specialization. First is that apart from the skills that you can advance with XP, you have a limited number of stat points, in things like strength, intelligent, dex, etc. You can rearrange them (once for free, and later only painfully slowly and expensively) to give boosts to whatever sorts of skills you are specializing in. eg if you make a wizard, you bump up intelligence at the cost of strength. The other thing in Disworld MUD is that you have to choose a guild (ie character class). Certain commands/abillities are available only to members of a certain guild (eg only wizards can memorize spells and make scrolls, everybody else can only cast spells by using up scrolls.) Oh, also your guild makes it much cheaper (in xp) to train the skills that the guild specializes in. The wizard's guild will only train you cheaply to a very low level of fighting, and even less of faith skills (wizards in Discworld feel that just because the gods exist, doesn't mean you have to believe in them.)
Oh, also, very good point about game length. I agree that if the game is short (like it is now) it's fine the way it is. I was asuming that the long-term vision of this game is to target 50+ hours for one play-through.
Oh, and now after trying to figure out how to encourage people to specialize... why are we trying to get people to specialize? How does that make the game more fun? We trying to make it so people are interested in playing multiple times (with different specializations)? Is there a hope for a multi-player future?
Awesome, and you've got 38 patrons already!
In my mind there's a bit of a conflict between your first milestone ("Permanent removal of advertisements") and your highest pledge level where you'll prominently link the sponsor on the home page. To me there isn't much (or necessarily any) difference between a sponsorship link and an ad.
I don't want any donors (or potential donors) to be disappointed/disillusioned by this.
Maybe you can think of a footnote to add to the first milestone or something.
Keep up the good work! I hope this becomes a significant income stream.
Love it! I opened the .xm file in milkytracker and just stared at it for at least 5 plays through. Actually, I cried a bit too. Maybe I need to get back into making music.
What program did you use to make this?
About 5 years ago I tought my self milkytracker and made background music for Variations on Rockdodger. Awesome to what you've done, what the wave-forms look like, etc.
The game!
I think a good game will generate a lot more attention, excitement and contributors.
Another free software game engine is not news, but a well designed free-software with a little polish gathers quite a following.
Also, I think the best way to know what features the game engine should have is to build a game. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_ain%27t_gonna_need_it
Also, if I was hunting for a game engine, I'd want one that was used to create a good game. I don't see how a game engine could be well rounded or well tested without being used to make a good game.
I say focus on the game, but stick with the idea of developing both... just use the game as the focus, and have the game development tell you what features you should add to the engine.
I think the game engine can only be truely flexible and appropriate for making a variety of games once you make the second game using it (and expand it further so it can support both games.)
Glad you're thinking about this :)
Thanks for all your work! You're one of by big reasons for finally signing up for flattr.com
- Jason
Awesome! I'd love to see these in a game :)
The file is not corrupted, just named oddly. Either rename it to chars.tgz or extract it like so:
tar -xzf chars.tar_.gz
I guess in my mind it's coming down to:
What's a good way to offer offer the user some fun choices, and make enough variation in playing experience so you could play the same game again, without letting the user easily make choises that they will feel screwed over by later?
I want people thinking "wow, that was fun, I wonder what it'd be like to play again as a sourceress" not "man, if only I hadn't put a couple early advancement points into magic I'd actually have a good warrior"
I'm sure there are many good solutions to this. I'm curious what it'd be like if you only got better at what you practice. In Discworld Mud you randomly get skill advances in what you're doing (this system is called the Task Master). The amount of skill advances you get from the Task Master is less than you get in the usual way (of gaining xp from your actions (mostly fighting usually) and spending it on the skill of your choice. An interesting thing about the Task Master in Discworld Mud is that you are more likely to advance this way if you are doing something at a level that is challenging, eg fighting with a weapon that is heavy enough that you can only hit 50-70% of the time with. And of course leveling up skills in this way is much less likely if you already have a high level. This mirrors the real world in a cool way.
Discworld Mud is designed to be played for hundreds to thousands of hours, so it makes sense to me that it's more complex than Flare. For a game like flare (the size it is right now) I'd probably only ask the player one thing ever: Which of these (4 or so) character classes do you want? And then just tell them when they've gotten enough fighting experience to be able to use the next level of gear. And hide the weapons that only other classes will ever be able to use. But flare is aiming to be a longer game, so maybe more complexity/options is appropriate. Also I think Clint wants to build/test some standard RPM elements in the engine :)
mdwh: I've never heard of an RPG that did not enable you to advance way quicker in the beginning.
I think it's good to give levels/advancement more quickly in the beginning to help get the player excited about the game, and learning the advancement system. (Which I assume is why just about every RPG does in this way.) Also this method mimics reality. We learn very quickly at first, but it takes years to become a true master.
Clint,
Hehe I wasn't thinking you'd create 50 hours worth of levels yourself. I'm hoping others will help with content. That said it is a good idea to have a short-term goal that you can do even if not much help comes along.
Also, to clarify, I mean a game that you can enjoy for 50 hours, including getting lost, doodling around, playing good parts again to level up a little, etc. Playing several parts again to try to remember where that door to the area you didn't go to yet was, or looking around for something. So what I meant for a 50+ hour game could be completed in 15 hours if you know what you're doing.
My basic point isn't "please make me a huge game by Thursday" but "please make sure the advancement system scales well to longer games", so as the game grows over the years it doesn't become more broken.
manwesulimo2004, that sounds interesting (and more complex), but it sounds like the cost of your next stat upgrade (regardless of whether it's a level 1 upgrade or a level 10) scales up exponentially. Which doesn't address my concern about an early stat upgrade choice making it take hours longer to get level 10 in something.
Thanks for your comments! I'm glad people are reading and thinking about this.
Re-spec is an interesting option. I forgot about that.
As for "jack of all trades, master of none", with my suggestion, you could do this, but I don't think it would be optimal. It'd take a while, and you wouldn't be good at anything... like fighting.
I think the optimal strategy is to choose how you're going to kill things (eg sword and shield) and then pump loads of xp into the skills that work with that strategie (eg physical and defense).
Then if you want to spend the 8 hours of XP on getting enough magic to do the teleport spell, then go for it.
'course this requires you to ballance the game knowing that any character class can get the teleport spell and still be good at fighting.
This is making me realise that discworld mud (the game I play a lot that has this sort of advancement scheme) has two other things that encourage specialization. First is that apart from the skills that you can advance with XP, you have a limited number of stat points, in things like strength, intelligent, dex, etc. You can rearrange them (once for free, and later only painfully slowly and expensively) to give boosts to whatever sorts of skills you are specializing in. eg if you make a wizard, you bump up intelligence at the cost of strength. The other thing in Disworld MUD is that you have to choose a guild (ie character class). Certain commands/abillities are available only to members of a certain guild (eg only wizards can memorize spells and make scrolls, everybody else can only cast spells by using up scrolls.) Oh, also your guild makes it much cheaper (in xp) to train the skills that the guild specializes in. The wizard's guild will only train you cheaply to a very low level of fighting, and even less of faith skills (wizards in Discworld feel that just because the gods exist, doesn't mean you have to believe in them.)
Oh, also, very good point about game length. I agree that if the game is short (like it is now) it's fine the way it is. I was asuming that the long-term vision of this game is to target 50+ hours for one play-through.
Oh, and now after trying to figure out how to encourage people to specialize... why are we trying to get people to specialize? How does that make the game more fun? We trying to make it so people are interested in playing multiple times (with different specializations)? Is there a hope for a multi-player future?