I'm using Linux exclusively so if I can't get the game to run through Wine (or Mono or something) I can't be of much help, but it sounds like you're keeping the engine fairly low-level so it shouldn't be a problem. Even OpenAL wouldn't be a problem on Linux (of course) but it's totally not necessary for this. You can even load sounds into byte arrays using what .NET seems to offer so performance is not a problem. I digress.
Graphics... There are a number of tilesets on OGA. You might find some neat isometric-ish pixeling. (I prefer square tiles aligned with our rectangular monitors, I just mean "isometric" as in sort of dimensional-looking.) Those tiles, being the world, will form the bulk of what is seen on screen in "walk" mode. In "battle" mode there will need to be an image representing every monster. Those larger images are kind of hard to come by so there's 3D rendering in Blender and some extra fiddling around in GIMP/Photoshop to make the colors and whatnot look nice. I would start with the models available on OGA and try to match to the "walk" mode sprites. It's always good practice to have those sprites available so a monster isn't relegated to only random encounters, unless you're making a Pokemaster/trainer system, but this isn't Pokemon.
When it comes to battle mechanics, I remember being rather overwhelmed by RPG Maker's exponential/quadratic experience curves. Even the basic Intelligence/Strength/Endurance system took a long time for me to grasp. But I guess if you don't have the math behind it yet either you can just take the basic system I've described and multiply everything by 10. That should allow for integers with enough precision for interesting things to happen.
With linear point increases, after a while leveling would seem pointless (1 point next to 50) so that's what the curves are for. As for what skills get leveled when the player levels up, maybe let the player choose the skills like in the Elder Scrolls games. There's only Intelligence, Strength, and Endurance so it's really a choice of getting smart or getting ripped, or maybe both. Maybe you get 3 experience chips for each level up that you have to apply. Each chip is worth an amount determined by where your level is at on the experience curve. Nothing fancy, just like an exponential curve or something that makes it so the same relative combat advantage is given per level, like every level up you get +10% of whatever the specific skill is at (wouldn't work when a skill is at 0 though). Not too easy, not too hard, just right. Additional balancing of stats will probably be needed once there is a game prototype.
I would like to write a story. To me, these types of slow-paced games really benefit from a good story. That's why Final Fantasy appeals to an audience old enough to comprehend it while Pokemon is for kids who like little monsters. How that story would be implemented remains a question though. How much dialogue do you think would be reasonable for this game? That affects everything. Also, what specific setting do you have in mind? Realistic European, Oriental, nomadic sword & sorcery, Third Age Middle Earth, pre-Earth, Scandinavian, steampunk, dieselpunk, science fantasy, Greek, an island, etc.
Those screenshots made me laugh harder than I have in a long time. Thank you for that.
I get it, you're making more of a classic RPG (engine is similar to RPG Maker) rather than Counter-Strike BFG Edition. Also of interest in the screens is that the RPG uses a few isometric tiles (which can sometimes obscure the action but look pretty) while the shooter is optimized for visibility and by-the-numbers action mechanics. My battle system is definitely out the window here. The hit points are too small and coarse to give any depth to a turn-based battle. It would just turn into "you whack goblin with sword, you win".
Here is a possible suggestion for the game, disregarding Go Realms: Story-driven with one full and complete protagonist. We go through a well-structured story that is often non-linear but still has playable scenes set in dungeons with small story arcs for the protagonist and maybe even the other characters. The old man in the cave has a purpose other than dispensing swords, the warlock has reasons for doing evil things, etc. Even the most primitive of RPG engines can be hacked to show pseudo-cutscenes, story can be milked from the turn-based battles, and of course dialogue will play a major role in the storytelling, establishing conflict between the protagonist and those around him/her early on so that the player feels the significance of the hero going off on this great quest (or whatever non-cliched thing you want to call it).
But that's just an idea. I might enjoy the writing, but I can't draw close-ups of characters. For that you would need either renders of 3D models (probably the easiest) or a really good 2D artist. Of course when it comes to assets OGA is a great resource.
----
Regarding sound:
I am no expert on .NET, in fact I have tried to stay away from it, but it looks like there are lots of built-in goodies to play sounds, which are apparently in or are supported by the Mono framework (hopefully) so in theory these objects are cross-platform. With .NET and OpenGL it sounds like you are trying to stay away from bundling machine code with the program, in which case I would draw your attention to the fact that OpenAL is not included in many versions of Windows. So I would avoid what forces me to bundle a DLL unless that offers some clear cross-platform advantage that I am not aware of.
I didn't see this thread until just now, but for the past few days I have been planning the combat system for a top-down action RPG very similar to what you have described. I even downloaded a couple of your textures during that process, planning to eventually use them as textures or tiles, depending on whether I implemented the game in Godot's 3D tile editor or pure 2D using HTML5 technologies. And I was thinking, I can't code all this myself but I can sure contribute in the softer design areas. What a fluke!
I'm going to pitch you what my idea was in the form of a mini concept document. Coupled with the kind of art I uploaded here this should give you a rough idea as to what I can do. I'd like to try to put work into your game.
Go Realms
This is a quick concept overview of the open source, fantasy-themed hack 'n' slash game, Go Realms.
Quick overview:
- Player controls a fantasy character who can swing a blade and cast spells
- Goal is to complete all of the dungeons
- There is a hub world from where player enters the dungeons
- Player moves dynamically around gridmap from top-down perspective, more like Mario than Pokemon
- Player encounters monsters that are strategically placed to add challenge
- At the end of each dungeon player fights a really powerful monster
Kinda similar games:
- The Legend of Zelda
- Berserker Quest VI
- Mega Man
Example progression of play:
1. Enter Dungeon of Doom
2. Kill Goblins and Goblin Shamans near entrance
3. Descend to second level of dungeon
4. Fight more powerful undead monsters and die
5. Respawn at dungeon entrance
6. Fight all the way through first and second levels
7. Enter third level of dungeon
8. Kill the Minotaur
9. Get teleported back to Elf Altar
10. etc.
Combat system:
- Characters have Intelligence (max mana), Strength (max melee), and Endurance (max health)
- Damage can be dealt through melee and spells
- Character deals RANDOM * STRENGTH (0 to STRENGTH inclusive) damage when using melee
- Spells drain mana and have specific effects
--- MAGIC MISSILE: Long-range projectile, 1 dmg, costs 1 mana
--- TELEPORT: Takes character to Elf Altar, costs 2 mana
--- GOBLIN FLAME: Long-range fireball, 1 dmg within 1 square radius of hit, summons Fire Spirit at hit, costs 3 mana
--- EXPLODE: Short-range omnidirectional damage equal to random melee + 1
- Mana can be restored by evoking a meditation aura, which does not interrupt combat and activates automatically when mana hits 0
- Monsters use a logic tree to select actions that gives them access to just about everything a player can do
Playable characters:
BARBARIAN
Goblins terrorize the Kingdom. When he was just a boy, Barbarian's parents were killed by a roving band of goblins. His life's mission now revenge, his interests are aligned with those of the Kingdom, so believing that His Majesty is on his side, Barbarian goes boldly into the dungeons to slay as many goblins as he can to bring royal validation and meaning to his life.
INT: 0 STR: 4 END: 4
GYPSY
Gypsy never had anything to live for, and one day when the last of her lovers casts her aside, she turns her back on the civilized world and becomes the ultimate fighting machine. With her athletic physique and education in the magical arts, she has nothing to fear from goblins, but she knows that if she digs deep enough she can face a real challenge: the undead. And a challenge is what she is looking for.
INT: 2 STR: 3 END: 3
WIZARD
Wizard has been a loner all his life. With his singular devotion to magical sciences, he is quite isolated, and his body has all but wasted away. His most recent magical hobby is conjuring demons, but he thinks he can take it a step further. Maybe if he gets his hands on some corpses he can attempt to necromance them and create some abomination to call a wife.
INT: 4 STR: 2 END: 2
Monsters:
FIRE SPIRIT
INT: 0 STR: 3 END: 2
GOBLIN
INT: 0 STR: 3 END: 3
GOBLIN SHAMAN
INT: 3 STR: 2 END: 2
CORPSE WARRIOR
INT: 0 STR: 4 END: 4
WRAITH
INT: 1 STR: 4 END: 6
MINOTAUR
INT: 6 STR: 6 END: 8
BLACK KNIGHT
INT: 2 STR: 7 END: 12
DRAGON
INT: 5 STR: 6 END: 12
WARLOCK
INT: 11 STR: 4 END: 14
Other details:
- No party system
- No leveling up
- No battle screens or special game modes
Please bear in mind that this is just a concept, and more of an action concept, but I think this is the ultimate in simplicity. As for sales and that sort of capitalist stuff, I think the furthest we could go to that end would be selling certain versions of the game and eventually making all source and assets available under a permissive license, though I am just as open to a game that is 100% public domain from conception. In any genre or licensing situation I'd say IndieDB and the Ubuntu Software Center would be good places to release.
I am curious as to what software you are using to make the engine. Being at least somewhat cross-platform should be a priority, and if you want to do all the coding I can at the very least offer guidance to that end.
Glad to hear about the music. You might consider uploading a preview file (whichever song you consider the best) so that you have a play icon instead of a game screenshot and people can listen to it.
Regarding the stuff on Wikia, I'd say that if it's a big game you recognize like God of War, regardless of whether or not the company is defunct, somebody owns the distribution rights and thus the copyright is still there. Probably just some kids playing some very funny tricks.
A strange stipulation which may not be enforceable, yet is nonetheless acceptable.
What about the other tunes? Are you saying you got them off of wikia.com? If they're from a game like God of War, you have to be absolutely sure they're public domain. This is dangerous territory to tread. What if somebody used one of the songs which happened to be proprietary? That would taint the material it's used in until the song is removed. It may not be discovered for years, but then all of a sudden it would have to be pulled from the market.
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I'm using Linux exclusively so if I can't get the game to run through Wine (or Mono or something) I can't be of much help, but it sounds like you're keeping the engine fairly low-level so it shouldn't be a problem. Even OpenAL wouldn't be a problem on Linux (of course) but it's totally not necessary for this. You can even load sounds into byte arrays using what .NET seems to offer so performance is not a problem. I digress.
Graphics... There are a number of tilesets on OGA. You might find some neat isometric-ish pixeling. (I prefer square tiles aligned with our rectangular monitors, I just mean "isometric" as in sort of dimensional-looking.) Those tiles, being the world, will form the bulk of what is seen on screen in "walk" mode. In "battle" mode there will need to be an image representing every monster. Those larger images are kind of hard to come by so there's 3D rendering in Blender and some extra fiddling around in GIMP/Photoshop to make the colors and whatnot look nice. I would start with the models available on OGA and try to match to the "walk" mode sprites. It's always good practice to have those sprites available so a monster isn't relegated to only random encounters, unless you're making a Pokemaster/trainer system, but this isn't Pokemon.
When it comes to battle mechanics, I remember being rather overwhelmed by RPG Maker's exponential/quadratic experience curves. Even the basic Intelligence/Strength/Endurance system took a long time for me to grasp. But I guess if you don't have the math behind it yet either you can just take the basic system I've described and multiply everything by 10. That should allow for integers with enough precision for interesting things to happen.
With linear point increases, after a while leveling would seem pointless (1 point next to 50) so that's what the curves are for. As for what skills get leveled when the player levels up, maybe let the player choose the skills like in the Elder Scrolls games. There's only Intelligence, Strength, and Endurance so it's really a choice of getting smart or getting ripped, or maybe both. Maybe you get 3 experience chips for each level up that you have to apply. Each chip is worth an amount determined by where your level is at on the experience curve. Nothing fancy, just like an exponential curve or something that makes it so the same relative combat advantage is given per level, like every level up you get +10% of whatever the specific skill is at (wouldn't work when a skill is at 0 though). Not too easy, not too hard, just right. Additional balancing of stats will probably be needed once there is a game prototype.
I would like to write a story. To me, these types of slow-paced games really benefit from a good story. That's why Final Fantasy appeals to an audience old enough to comprehend it while Pokemon is for kids who like little monsters. How that story would be implemented remains a question though. How much dialogue do you think would be reasonable for this game? That affects everything. Also, what specific setting do you have in mind? Realistic European, Oriental, nomadic sword & sorcery, Third Age Middle Earth, pre-Earth, Scandinavian, steampunk, dieselpunk, science fantasy, Greek, an island, etc.
Those screenshots made me laugh harder than I have in a long time. Thank you for that.
I get it, you're making more of a classic RPG (engine is similar to RPG Maker) rather than Counter-Strike BFG Edition. Also of interest in the screens is that the RPG uses a few isometric tiles (which can sometimes obscure the action but look pretty) while the shooter is optimized for visibility and by-the-numbers action mechanics. My battle system is definitely out the window here. The hit points are too small and coarse to give any depth to a turn-based battle. It would just turn into "you whack goblin with sword, you win".
Here is a possible suggestion for the game, disregarding Go Realms: Story-driven with one full and complete protagonist. We go through a well-structured story that is often non-linear but still has playable scenes set in dungeons with small story arcs for the protagonist and maybe even the other characters. The old man in the cave has a purpose other than dispensing swords, the warlock has reasons for doing evil things, etc. Even the most primitive of RPG engines can be hacked to show pseudo-cutscenes, story can be milked from the turn-based battles, and of course dialogue will play a major role in the storytelling, establishing conflict between the protagonist and those around him/her early on so that the player feels the significance of the hero going off on this great quest (or whatever non-cliched thing you want to call it).
But that's just an idea. I might enjoy the writing, but I can't draw close-ups of characters. For that you would need either renders of 3D models (probably the easiest) or a really good 2D artist. Of course when it comes to assets OGA is a great resource.
----
Regarding sound:
I am no expert on .NET, in fact I have tried to stay away from it, but it looks like there are lots of built-in goodies to play sounds, which are apparently in or are supported by the Mono framework (hopefully) so in theory these objects are cross-platform. With .NET and OpenGL it sounds like you are trying to stay away from bundling machine code with the program, in which case I would draw your attention to the fact that OpenAL is not included in many versions of Windows. So I would avoid what forces me to bundle a DLL unless that offers some clear cross-platform advantage that I am not aware of.
I didn't see this thread until just now, but for the past few days I have been planning the combat system for a top-down action RPG very similar to what you have described. I even downloaded a couple of your textures during that process, planning to eventually use them as textures or tiles, depending on whether I implemented the game in Godot's 3D tile editor or pure 2D using HTML5 technologies. And I was thinking, I can't code all this myself but I can sure contribute in the softer design areas. What a fluke!
I'm going to pitch you what my idea was in the form of a mini concept document. Coupled with the kind of art I uploaded here this should give you a rough idea as to what I can do. I'd like to try to put work into your game.
Go Realms
This is a quick concept overview of the open source, fantasy-themed hack 'n' slash game, Go Realms.
Quick overview:
- Player controls a fantasy character who can swing a blade and cast spells
- Goal is to complete all of the dungeons
- There is a hub world from where player enters the dungeons
- Player moves dynamically around gridmap from top-down perspective, more like Mario than Pokemon
- Player encounters monsters that are strategically placed to add challenge
- At the end of each dungeon player fights a really powerful monster
Kinda similar games:
- The Legend of Zelda
- Berserker Quest VI
- Mega Man
Example progression of play:
1. Enter Dungeon of Doom
2. Kill Goblins and Goblin Shamans near entrance
3. Descend to second level of dungeon
4. Fight more powerful undead monsters and die
5. Respawn at dungeon entrance
6. Fight all the way through first and second levels
7. Enter third level of dungeon
8. Kill the Minotaur
9. Get teleported back to Elf Altar
10. etc.
Combat system:
- Characters have Intelligence (max mana), Strength (max melee), and Endurance (max health)
- Damage can be dealt through melee and spells
- Character deals RANDOM * STRENGTH (0 to STRENGTH inclusive) damage when using melee
- Spells drain mana and have specific effects
--- MAGIC MISSILE: Long-range projectile, 1 dmg, costs 1 mana
--- TELEPORT: Takes character to Elf Altar, costs 2 mana
--- GOBLIN FLAME: Long-range fireball, 1 dmg within 1 square radius of hit, summons Fire Spirit at hit, costs 3 mana
--- EXPLODE: Short-range omnidirectional damage equal to random melee + 1
- Mana can be restored by evoking a meditation aura, which does not interrupt combat and activates automatically when mana hits 0
- Monsters use a logic tree to select actions that gives them access to just about everything a player can do
Playable characters:
BARBARIAN
Goblins terrorize the Kingdom. When he was just a boy, Barbarian's parents were killed by a roving band of goblins. His life's mission now revenge, his interests are aligned with those of the Kingdom, so believing that His Majesty is on his side, Barbarian goes boldly into the dungeons to slay as many goblins as he can to bring royal validation and meaning to his life.
INT: 0 STR: 4 END: 4
GYPSY
Gypsy never had anything to live for, and one day when the last of her lovers casts her aside, she turns her back on the civilized world and becomes the ultimate fighting machine. With her athletic physique and education in the magical arts, she has nothing to fear from goblins, but she knows that if she digs deep enough she can face a real challenge: the undead. And a challenge is what she is looking for.
INT: 2 STR: 3 END: 3
WIZARD
Wizard has been a loner all his life. With his singular devotion to magical sciences, he is quite isolated, and his body has all but wasted away. His most recent magical hobby is conjuring demons, but he thinks he can take it a step further. Maybe if he gets his hands on some corpses he can attempt to necromance them and create some abomination to call a wife.
INT: 4 STR: 2 END: 2
Monsters:
FIRE SPIRIT
INT: 0 STR: 3 END: 2
GOBLIN
INT: 0 STR: 3 END: 3
GOBLIN SHAMAN
INT: 3 STR: 2 END: 2
CORPSE WARRIOR
INT: 0 STR: 4 END: 4
WRAITH
INT: 1 STR: 4 END: 6
MINOTAUR
INT: 6 STR: 6 END: 8
BLACK KNIGHT
INT: 2 STR: 7 END: 12
DRAGON
INT: 5 STR: 6 END: 12
WARLOCK
INT: 11 STR: 4 END: 14
Other details:
- No party system
- No leveling up
- No battle screens or special game modes
Please bear in mind that this is just a concept, and more of an action concept, but I think this is the ultimate in simplicity. As for sales and that sort of capitalist stuff, I think the furthest we could go to that end would be selling certain versions of the game and eventually making all source and assets available under a permissive license, though I am just as open to a game that is 100% public domain from conception. In any genre or licensing situation I'd say IndieDB and the Ubuntu Software Center would be good places to release.
I am curious as to what software you are using to make the engine. Being at least somewhat cross-platform should be a priority, and if you want to do all the coding I can at the very least offer guidance to that end.
Glad to hear about the music. You might consider uploading a preview file (whichever song you consider the best) so that you have a play icon instead of a game screenshot and people can listen to it.
Regarding the stuff on Wikia, I'd say that if it's a big game you recognize like God of War, regardless of whether or not the company is defunct, somebody owns the distribution rights and thus the copyright is still there. Probably just some kids playing some very funny tricks.
A strange stipulation which may not be enforceable, yet is nonetheless acceptable.
What about the other tunes? Are you saying you got them off of wikia.com? If they're from a game like God of War, you have to be absolutely sure they're public domain. This is dangerous territory to tread. What if somebody used one of the songs which happened to be proprietary? That would taint the material it's used in until the song is removed. It may not be discovered for years, but then all of a sudden it would have to be pulled from the market.
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