I thought about writing each month a sort of mini-development diary about what is the current status of my upcoming RPG sci-fi game “Planet Stronghold”. I know it’s not the end of September yet but I am so busy recently that I can assure I won’t be able to make anything more beside what I’m going to write in this post.
So let’s start in order:
- at beginning of the month I thought I made the game a bit too much “casual”. There was little strategy involved in the fights, so I decided to add Action Points, several different kind of attacks, and more
- I then realized that, beside being a pain to code, it would have been too much “hardcore”. So I ended up with a middle solution that I believe works quite well. You have different attack types that can change a lot the course of the battle, and now each item can be used only once, then your turn ends (before you could just heal yourself completely provided you had enough healing kits in your pack)
- Then I started implementing the quest and side quests. I made only one so far, as a test, and I am very pleased. Before uploading the new alpha though, I’ll wait until I have written a bit more quests / main plot story, so you can try different kind of quests. I like the fact that now you can use the heroes skills to solve certain situations instead of simply jumping straight into the battle (you can still do that, of course!)
- like many RPGs, the game is mostly linear as far as the main plot is concerned, but the side quests are very open. You can complete them all, or you can ignore them all, as you wish. Some give very powerful reward items though, so I would advise trying to complete them all!
- I am now at a good point: the game engine, including the battle system and the new quest/skills usage system is very stable. I believe I fixed all the bugs. I am also going to improve the barracks so that you can also choose the party formation: this way you can fight the battles with less party members and they’ll get more XP each one.
About this last point, I am still unsure if to use the Training Screen I’ve been coded though. In practice would work like this: the heroes left unselected can begin a training session so they slowly improve the skills automatically on their own. Though I am not sure would make much sense? Perhaps would be cooler to have lower level heroes to bring with you so they would then level fast when fighting higher level enemies? (it’s some sort of powerleveling that you can do in the MMOs :D)
I have to think about this! Share your thoughts if you want.
In October, I’ll surely reach a point where I can think seriously which direction to take. I could start a beta pre-order of the game, since then the game would be already quite long and don’t want to keep it public, or perhaps do a closed beta. I have also to see if to integrate some optional online features in it. I think a pre-order would be a good move so could give me an idea of how much people like the game, so I know if I can spend lot of more time/resources on it, or not 🙂
The training would help to ‘power level’ as you said the characters you don’t take with you, unless you just add that even if their not with you they get the exp and that could solve the problem.
As for pre-order, you know you already got one here. 😉 Anything extra though for those fans that helped/pre-order? I’m sure an incentive would help as well as with other games that do it. (For instance, I had planned to reserve Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors a Nintendo DS game, in store at Gamestop but now online you get a watch so I’ll be doing it online despite having to pay shipping and handling.)(I think a very nice addition would be a bonus character/romanceable. Although that might be hard in the long run but well worth it. You could always add that character/romanceable later as well as DLC that people who didn’t pre-order have to pay extra for. *crossesfingersforandroidromance* I’ve been playing Mass Effect again. XD Legion = Love.)
The bonus incentive is interesting. Could be an extra characters or some exclusive equipment (Armor or weapon) maybe with an exclusive associated quest (a quest that normally you won’t be able to play in the normal game). Will think about it thanks for the suggestion 🙂
Usually in JRPGs, you take your entire squad with you even if most of the characters are not in the active party. They usually get 1/2 experience so you are encouraged to keep switching characters so they’re all leveled up.
Another alternative that is used in SRPGs is to declare a class so when one member of that class levels up, all other members level up at the same time.
Other games like Disgaea are notorious in that you have to use a character to attack to get any experience at all ><.
Hm yes interesting. I could add another button and let the people change their party anytime they want… but I wanted also to have some situation where for a reason or another some heroes can’t fight. I am still thinking about moving unused characters to a training center and pick a sort of training program that raises only certain stats (like picking a class for his training). I think is cool because could be a sort of meta-game 🙂
I came across this and it reminded me of Planet Stronghold battle system
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76EGtfINyag&NR=1
Maybe I’m just too young, but are these types of battles called “Wizardry”-style? There are lots of such types of games still popular in Japan, or so I heard.
Wow nice one. That is much more complex than my game (or at least looks so!).
Yes if I remember correctly wizardry was the first title to use a turnbased game system seen from 1st person view like that. I personally like them (but also like real-time combats).