Category Archives: development screenshot

Let’s talk about attributes

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rpgrules
From left to right, my cat Leon and Miele, having a discussion about RPG balancing

Balancing a RPG is… one of the hardest things in game design ever. Even in MMORPG made by teams of 100+ people with multi-million budgets you see patches for months after the game is out to “tweak / balance the game”.

So I am sure that even my new RPG Seasons Of The Wolf very likely won’t be “perfectly balanced”, but to me the first goal is to make it fun. But I know that there are some very hardcore people who will dissect the game in details and find all possible weaknesses.

Let’s have a NIGHTMARE

Let’s start with saying that this time I’ve listened to the pleas about the difficulty:

difficulty

Note the new difficulty level with that friendly name “NIGHTMARE”. Already the hard level will be… hard, but I expect the nightmare to be a real pain in the ass, requiring people to grind, fine-tune their equipment, and maybe even reload old savegames to try a different tactic/leveling up path.

You know, all those things that for normal human beings are annoying, but for those guys are the most fun thing ever! 😉

I’m joking in case it wasn’t clear. No offense to anyone! Those hardcore RPG players are indeed the most useful testers since they usually find more bugs than anyone else, so an applause to them!

Attributes, attributes…

Loren’s attribute system was pretty simple: 3 attributes, Strength, Skill, Will. One of them particularly good for each of the 3 classes: Warrior, Thief and Mage. But even the other two would provide benefits.

This time in SOTW I wanted to have more attributes: six in total.

attributes

Let’s see each one in detail:

  • Constitution – increases character’s durability in battles. Each point spent in this attribute will increase the HP amount by 10.
  • Will – increases character’s ability to use special attacks or spells in battle. Each points spent in this attribute will increase the SP amount by 10.
  • Strength – increases character’s physical damage in battle. Each point spent in this attribute will increase the Attack value.
  • Skill – increases character’s ability to avoid or block physical attacks in battle. Each point spent in this attribute will increase the Defense value.
  • Agility – increases character’s Speed value. Fast characters will move sooner and perform the same actions quicker than slower ones.
  • Arcane – increases character’s Magical ability. A high value helps caster to cast more powerful spells, and also grants protection to magic attacks.

One of the rules for game design, is that each attributes should be at least useful to each Class. If there’s an attribute that gives absolutely NO advantage to any of the game Classes, you have “a problem”.

Currently, my only attribute with this problem is Strength. It works fine for Warrior and Thief since influences the Attack, but as you can imagine, Mages won’t have much use for it. Unless maybe I allow them to use Missile weapons too, or have strength influence some of the resistances.

Yes, because while the resistances will be the same as Loren, they’ll use a much better/more practical percentage based scale, so it’s not enough to have two armor items giving each Fire resistance to become immune. More like, each piece will give some percentage points.

So I have still to think better about it, I have some ideas already… (the attributes will surely change in the final version, but not by much).

Of course, there are plenty of RPG with unbalanced attributes that are still fun to play. Baldur’s Gate and Fallout comes to mind, just to name two very popular and fun RPGs 😉

More news coming next week, about this game and the other one currently in progress!

Incoming Nicole demo preview tomorrow

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I wanted to post it today, but as my cat Othello below always says “Never do today what you can do tomorrow”.

Othello
Othello is a world-expert in cat-napping

Jokes apart, tomorrow will upload a “demo preview” of Nicole. What is a demo preview? well is not the finished game, and not a finished demo. But is more than an Alpha version.

Ok I confess, I just made up that term. But in practice what I mean is:

  • the game romance plot is finished except one route (still missing the mystery part)
  • all the art is done, except a few chibis and some extra sprites for some scenes
  • the gameplay is done, but need a bit more testing to balance it

So there isn’t much work left, assuming people involved will work faster (I’ll make sure to use my spiked whip this time to speed things up!). I am releasing this demo because this way everyone who pre-ordered the game last month has something to play, and don’t think that I ran away with the money on a desert island! 🙂

I wanted to release it today, but there are still a few annoying things to finish so I want to wait one day more to give time to the chibi artist to draw two more images.

actionchibis

Also, I’m very likely going to hire another writer to do the yuri part. Not because the current writing is bad, rather the opposite (as I’m sure you’ll agree after reading it tomorrow) but because is taking too long. I definitely don’t want people to think that yuri is just a secondary thing for me, I want to treat all my customers equally. And while releasing the yuri version 2 months later like for Heileen 3 was acceptable after all, releasing it after 6 months it would be too much! (and I think that’s what would happen right now).

I got a few submissions already, but if you’re a writer, are motivated and interested feel free to email me (you can find the email visiting the support page of my site on the top menu).

RPG fans I haven’t forgot about you! Please stay tuned because next week will hopefully talk about the new changes I made to SOTW, like the new attributes/skills! Meanwhile here’s a screenshot below to keep you interested 😉

attributes

Introducing the main characters of Seasons Of The Wolf

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althea-shea
Althea & Shea, the snow elven twins are the two playable characters of the game

During the game, you can play as one of the two twins. Like my previous RPGs, the main story doesn’t change based on who you pick, but the romance dialogues do.

Speaking of romances, this game will have one for each sexual preference. I know is much less than previous RPGs but I had to do this if I wanted this game to be out this year. I can always release DLC/expansions adding more romances later 😉

In this game though, differently from Loren, you can choose three classes: Ranger (the equivalent of Warrior class), Hunter (the equivalent of Thief class) and Druid (the equivalent of Mage class). So as you can see there will be more freedom of choices regarding your character class.

The character creation will let you customize your character, or pick some predefined builds (for those who want a quick-start). I am thinking to allow the same choices for the other twin: you can decide his/her skills or pick some ready-made builds.

The only restriction will be that both twins can’t have same Class, for balance reasons. As much as it could be fun to have two Rangers or two Druids, I am not confident that I can balance the battles for such situation. I might still allow the option for the more adventurous players, displaying a big warning though!

While I haven’t decided yet how the gameplay will be outside the battles, I plan to have a map with more “free roaming” than Loren’s one, have randomized encounters in specific places, some opportunity to grinding using a new system which I called “leveled grinding”.

In what it does consist? Let’s say that the plot is divided into “key points” that you must reach to advance in the story, and of course we’ll have different difficulty levels.

In practice:

beginning -> until key point of the story 1 = you can level up skills up to tier 1
-> until key point of the story 2 = you can level up skills up to tier 2
-> until key point of the story 3 = you can level up skills up to tier 3
this way maybe it would be possible in Easy/Normal mode to not reach the level cap for the next “key point” but still be powerful enough to go on, while playing in Hard mode it would be recommended or maybe even needed to get past. This system would let me balance the various fights much better since I would know exactly which skills the players CANNOT use in certain battles 😉

…and the other games?

Ahem, I have a good and a bad news. The good news is that Nicole will be a much bigger game than I thought (only the otome part will be over 100k words!) and Roommates background artist has started working. The bad news is that for sure I won’t be able to release those two games soon, because there’s still quite a lot of work left to do.

If I really must give a date, I’d say that probably one of the two games should be in beta towards the end of August, but I’m not 100% sure of that… so please wait, I assure you that will be worth it!

Nicole’s progresses

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In the video above, Nicole’s first encounter with Kurt Madry

Nicole made some big progresses. Oh no wait, I mean… I made some big progresses on Nicole (the otome/yuri dating sim I’m working on).

First of all the game has a brand new GUI:

I’m quite happy about it. You can see the main menu, load/save and options screen, and a in-game screenshot. By the way about the last screenshot, I’m sure Natalie from Winter In Faibrook would agree with Nicole, about what she says 😉

Yesterday I just finished coding Kurt’s route, and writer said should send me Ted shortly. There’s only Jeff left to write. However I don’t want to say anything I could regret later… so for now the estimate release date is still mid-July, for several reasons:

  • we decided to add extra images, so that there will be a “normal” ending, and a special ending. In the normal ending will use sprites over transparent backgrounds, while special endings will be full CGs drawings.
  • even if writer manages to finish writing the last otome route with Jeff at end of June, we still have to write the events in which the mystery is solved. Yes because they’re going to be different from the normal romance route, at least the final part.
  • also, we need to add some mystery events that will trigger in the game during certain points. Won’t be long scenes but needs to be thought carefully.
  • while the main gameplay is done, we wanted to add some nice touches like cellular messages, online shopping (since the main character is a bit of a geek) and so on. Small things but they take time to draw the art and code.
  • the chibi/main menu/GUI artist wants to do an OP to the game (a sort of trailer with music for it to show at the beginning, for those not familiar with japanese dating sims). That will be very cool but also require some time as you imagine.
  • last but not least I need to code all the scenes, add them inside the game and do a preliminary testing. And even if this is one of the main games I’m working on at the moment, I have to work a bit on the others as well… 😉

So, still a lots of stuff to do, and probably will delay the game release, but I think in the end will be worth the wait!

News on the new RPGs in development

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A “sneak peek” video of Planet Stronghold: Warzone (the sequel to Planet Stronghold)

Let’s talk about RPGs!

It was a while since I showed something about Planet Stronghold: Warzone. Being a bigger game than previous ones there has been some troubles developing it, but luckily now the development seems to be going at good pace. Making RPGs is very hard, sometimes I forget it 😀

Anyways, in the video above even if there’s still a lot of placeholder art, you can see some good stuff. The main menu, the music screen with some official tracks playing (the final OST will be available in the bonus content version like in my most recent games). But also the codex and the colony sim “minigame”.

I also made a test replacing the placeholder art with some of the finished desert tileset:colonysim

looks still a bit messy because it was just a quick test, but already better, doesn’t it ? 😉

We also had the “crazy idea” to have an exploration part similar to the one from the first game, using the isometric tileset system. It would show only during the missions (in the game there will be several missions to play, some unique to each side), so not the full game. This way the environmental situation the party is in will be better represented, offering some more strategy to decide how to pass specific points guarded by enemies, where to use the skills, and so on.

For now is just an idea and I don’t want to promise anything since is not like there aren’t other things to do, but if possible we’ll try to add it 🙂

The game will also have a much better “World Building”, meaning that the codex will talk about each race, faction, the main characters (in party and outside) and so on. It will also explain better how the Psionics work, the origins of Planet Stronghold and all that stuff. In summary, will rule 8)

The “Mystery RPG”

I have also some more good news about the “Mystery RPG” that I’m working on from time to time when there’s a moment of pause from the main games. I’ve hired again Taleweaver to write the story, and commissioned some of the art already. I don’t want to say any estimate release dates but if everything goes as planned (which probably won’t, by Murphy’s Law) this Fall the game might be at a good stage, maybe even in beta 😉

So as you can see, even if my next games to be released will likely be two dating sims (Nicole & Roommates) the fans of roleplay games can sleep well knowing that there will be some good stuff for them coming later this year!