Monthly Archives: June 2007

TOD: point of views!

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I paused doing the spells because I realized I haven’t yet decided what visual the game will have. I would like to make a first person visual like dungeon master, but I’m not sure it is an easy task to simulate a whole dungeon in 3d (even if is not real-time).

I mean, I should render several layers based on what the player see on the dungeon, with distant objects, monsters, etc. Also this would mean having a huge map to walk on. Exploration would take an importan part in this case.

However I’m thinking to use another system. That is, fewer “cells” (rooms were you can move) but with more interaction. Why have the player travel for hours into the dungeons, maybe looking for an item they should have found in a quest? I don’t like that pixel-hunting. One of the most tedious tasks in Diablo or even the recent Fate, is when you re-explore a whole map because you haven’t yet found monster X or item Y – and this takes several minutes of frustration, not fun.

So what’s my solution? my solution would be to have a map, yes, but smaller than the usual ones, in practice connecting directly all the rooms with something to do – so no more “empty rooms” with no purpose. But every room would have an encounter, a quest, a riddle, a door/chest to open, stairs going up/down to other levels, etc.

I am even thinking of displaying directly on the map what kind of stuff you can expect in it – not exactly which monsters/items of course, but just a generic icon that represent what you can find on it. I’m really thinking this would be a good idea because would cut my development time a lot (so could release the game sooner) but also would enhance the player gameplay, eliminating another frustrating part that is present in many other CRPG games.

I’ll soon post a screenshot of this system so you’ll understand better!

TOD: train your spells

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I’m still adding the spells, and had what I believe a nice idea. In most RPG games, your spells at level 1 just sucks 🙂 then when you level up, you gain more/new spells which are more powerful, and so on.

In many games like the most popular million dollar budget RPGs, the spell at level 50 is just the same spell at level 1, but instead of being named “Spark”, it is named “Infernal Flame”, and instead of doing 1dmg, it does 150 dmg!

What if the same spell you get at level 1 can be trained up and become that level 50 spell? why there’s the need to change the name and everytime replace it in your spellbook? it is wasted time for the player on a boring task!

In my game Tower Of Destiny, you’ll be able to train the spells you get at level 1. How? practicing it. In combat only, except for non-combat spells. For example, a spell like “summon food”, will increase everytime you cast it even if outside the combat. But a spell like “Heal” or “Summon Giant Rat” and so on will increase only if you cast it during the combat (to prevent cheating or bots).

I think that’s much better. This way every new spell you get, will be really a new spell – and not just a replacement for your old one. For a Red Wizard for example you’ll be able to learn the “Fire arrow” spell at level 1 and it will do just 1-3 dmg. But as you keep using it, you’ll be able to raise the damage as you level up.

Of course, there will be some checks: if you level up too fast for some reason, or if you use other spells, the basic damage value will scale accordingly to your level (I don’t want a level 10 wizard doing 1-3 dmg!) but at the same time it won’t be so powerful as it could be if you kept using it during combat.

This way each caster will shape up as you want it – and even if you get a new spell every 3 levels, they’ll be really new ones, not just older one renamed.

TOD: spells

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I have replaced the old magic school description with the new ones. It makes much more sense now. This way White Magic won’t be only healing/protecting spells: will be spells related to life, purity, holiness and so on.
So I can add a white magic spell like “Summon Unicorn”. And also I can add a black (death) magic spell like “Vampiric Bite”.

The discriminating factor is the spell origins, rather than the spell type. Definitely much better.

Each spell will be classified in: healing, damaging, summoning, empowering, weakening and miscellaneous spell.
Will have different effect type: single shot, recurring (for example a regenerating spell that heals XX Hp every turn)
And target: single target, area of effect, or all target

It is a pity thought that the most powerful black magic spells will be available only in the second chapter of the game, when the dark elves race will be introduced… but I really have no choice since I prefer to add few races each episode but make them well, rather than having all the races from the 1st episode but doing them quickly, badly, without good characterization.

Ok now I have to start writing down the spells for each deity. Six schools of magic, 3 races each one with 2 deities and 10 levels means 360 spells already…! but surely I won’t add new spells on each level. Or I can have same spells belong to 2 or more deities.
Ten levels of magic would mean about 1 new spell for each school every 3 levels of the caster, if the game will allow up to level 30 characters in the last episode.
It seems a very good variety to me, maybe even too much for my forces 😀

But for now I’ll just start writing down the spells and see. Maybe it’s easier than I thought to make 180-200 spells!

TOD: pray our Gods!

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I’m facing a tough design challenge… in my game I have a skill system. Each skill has a multiplier based on class. For now I didn’t put any skill cap – but in theory with the multiplier, each class should be different.

A healer would have x5 multiplier in White Magic. So, at level 9 (the max level for first episode) could get up to skill 50 (5 skill points per level if he practices it a lot). Also, every level up you can assign some skill points as you want. Assuming you create a human healer, you can assign 8 extra skill points (human gets most Skill Points of all races).

So in summary if you put all the points into white magic skill each levelup:

level 10 human healer, white magic skill = 50 (made with practice) + 8 sk * 10 = 130 skill points

Now this isn’t possible because I wanted to have skill maximum at 99 🙂 for sure I’ll have to raise this limit, but still having already a character at 130 skill after just level 10 is too much! Also, since the game is going to divided in 3 parts, and the first part has level cap 10 (so ideally, the 2nd part level 20, and the 3rd and last up to level 30) in the latter episodes you’d get an insanely high skill value:

level 30 human healer, white magic skill = 150 (made with practice) + 8 sk * 30 = 390 skill points!

For now I’m going to do this: half the number of skill points each race gets (so in the human case you can assign max 40 extra points for 10 level-ups) and also put a “per level skill cap”. This way the maximum value for any given skill for a level 10 character should be 50 + 4 sk x 10 = 90 skill points which is ok, and even for the 3rd episode would be:

level 30 human healer, white magic skill = 150 (made with practice) + 4 sk * 30 = 270 skill points

270 is still a lot for my original idea, but I don’t think player would like to see a very slow skill points increase over 30 levels… 🙂 also many MMORPG now have such high values for stats, I remember Everquest with values like 250 strength and so on!

Another problem I’m facing now is the spells system, based on Gods and prayers (prayer=spell).

Now each God has as different subset of spells. Each of them has minimum requirements of skills, for example:

Blessing Aura, White Magic = 3, level 1

the problem is that to add enough variety to the game, I need to add for each God at least 1 spell of any of the 6 magic schools (White, Black, Red, Yellow and Blue Magic), and I need to add a new one every 2-3 levels.

So only for the 1st God of humans (each race has 2 gods) I have already made 24 spells up to level 7, so probably will be 30 spells for each God! that means 30 x 6 Gods = 180 different spells !!

Hmm but well… I knew this game wouldn’t have been easy to program!!! 😀

TOD: classes selection screen

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 tower of destiny classes

Today I finished the class selection screen. I opted for some coloured spheres as icons, I think the final effect is nice 🙂 In total there are 12 classes available in the game. I’ve decided to allow all classes selection in the first episode, since now each class in practice is only a definition on how fast your character level specific skills, and what skills can’t learn.

For example the Necromancer class is very skilled in Black Magic (that focus on death), but is totally unable to learn White Magic (healing spells mostly). Another example is the Paladin that can’t learn Dual Wield or Lockpicking.

Next step is the skills allocation screen. In that screen I’ll show a summary of all the 24 skills and the starting values. Then you’ll be able to allocate XX extra skill points. The XX value will depend on the race chosen, humans for example will have 8 skill points each level up, while Ice Elf only 4.

You could ask me, how this will balance the game? through the deities/spells screen, and attributes.

Humans will have lower starting attributes compared to Ice Elves, and also their deities prayers (spells) will have less power/usefulness than the Ice Elves ones. Of course that doesn’t mean that they’ll be crap! just less powerful, to balance the races powers.