Category Archives: planet stronghold

Friday catblogging – moral decisions in RPGs

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In the picture above, the young cat Maja. I found her while on a trip in Croatia and decided to bring her home. She lived with me for 7 beautiful months (sadly, she’s not here anymore).

I’m writing right now the Planet Stronghold quest with the Matricks. They’re giant rocky humanoid, very resistant to physical damage but weaker against Psionics. During this quest, if you side with the Empire you’ll face a big moral dilemma: you have the option to kill their “breeders”, as sort of distraction so you can fight the King Rock (the evil tyrant of the race) with less defenses. Of course, even if we’re talking about aliens, killing breeders is always a bad thing! And indeed, some party members will be seriously disappointed if you do that.

I like how the “Empire side” is turning out. Because even if the ultimate goal is to submit all the alien races, it’s a somewhat grey territory – the decisions you make might seem inevitable since there’s a big war going on, but you’ll often wonder if what you’re doing is ethically correct, and you can still choose to act differently.

About the mid-december deadline, I’ll try my best to met it, however after the Matrick race I still need to write the Arnox and Apex Rahn quest, and then the final battle. My goal was to finish the game plot, apart for the romance subplots that can be done anytime since they’re not connected with the main plot (except when you decide to do the final fight). So I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it, it might be more like 20-21st december.

I want the next version 0.8 to have the full plot so anyone who preordered can play/test it and let me know any problem. Note that after 0.8 is released, I’ll raise the price to $19.95 and then once the final version is out, to $24.95.

Finally, I also got the new boys images for Spirited Heart new game. You can see a mockup below. Frebo is always the best! 😀

Friday (Saturday) catblogging – Planet Stronghold and Heileen spin-off

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OOps, I forgot my friday cat-post yesterday! So I’m going to post it now. In the picture on the left, you see Batman on the stairs of my old house, taking advantage of a rare sunny winter day 🙂

I’ve been working non-stop on Planet Stronghold race quests. I don’t want to say too much because is a spoiler, but later in the game (after chapter4) you’ll have to pick a side, and either submit or unify all the other alien races. Each race will occupy a sector of the map, so each race quest will take several special locations to complete. Considering the races are 6, this part is quite long, probably the longest chapter of the game.

After this, there’s the “final battle”, and the romance subplots. Is fun because even if in this game the dialogues are very reduced compared to a normal visual novel, it’s still VERY LONG, because the story itself is long. I think players should appreciate it, and I hope nobody will say “the game was too short”! 😀

Today I also got some sketches from Rebecca for Heileen spin-off. They’re the pirate clothing for some important characters: Lora, Ebele and Robert. They’re great as always – you can’t go wrong working with her, a pity now she’s making a career in comics fulltime 🙁

Maybe will post the sketches on twitter. As I wrote, this game won’t be a visual novel but something ver different. I have yet to decide myself how the gameplay will be but I have an idea in mind. Will be a mix of several genres. There will still be the a main plot and dialogues, but not in form of a VN only.

Probably this will disappoint a bit the VN fans but I want to try something different, and broaden my audience. It’s tough times for indie devs! 🙂 As for the other games in progress, no news about them this week. So Love & Order, Remember Me, and Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook are still going on- expect them coming out somewhere in the next months, just follow my blog or twitter (or subscribe to the newsletter) to be the first to know when they’re out!

New CRPG vs old CRPG

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I can’t believe what I’m about to write but… I recently bought Temple Of Elemental Evil from GoG, and… I didn’t like it anymore! Yes, the game that back in 2003 was considered by my brother and I (at those times we used to play CRPG together, sharing thoughts and impressions) as “the ultimate RPG”, right now, 7 years later… sucks.

Why? I think is because I aged up, am working full-time, and in general I’m used to a more “casual” gameplay (even if the right term would be “less hardcore”, not really casual). Just as example, I liked Torchlight MUCH more… and that’s an action RPG.

What does this means? I asked myself. Probably several things:

  • as I said, I’m no longer a teenager or young adult (I’m only 36 but well, I can clearly see that my interests,tastes are different from when I was 28-29 years old). Before, I had lot of free time, so reading a 100 pages manual for me was FUN, not a pain 😀 And a game like ToEE was fine, even if had lots of texts to read, even if had a complex inventory and spell management, and so on. Right now, that scares me off!
  • the gameplay of CRPGs evolved a lot. Now, you’re used to see several improvement/behaviour that if are missing really annoys you. Like moving the mouse over an item, and instantly see the difference with the one currently equipped in the appropriate slot (this was a feature requested from a user to my upcoming RPG Planet Stronghold and indeed, is very useful but also EXPECTED from nowadays players). So, there’s a long list of things, more or less important, that now players assume will be present by default in a game. And if they don’t find it, they feel frustrated/annoyed!
  • Party based vs single character and real-time vs turn based. Most old CRPG were party and turn based. Most of new CRPG are real-time and single player based (you can still have a party, but the NPC AI usually is good enough to fight in your place). When I was playing Mass Effect 2 in particular, I almost never cared of what my other companion were doing. I was just fighting on my own, assuming they would do their part 😀

Of course, not everyone will share the same thoughts as me. But I was a bit surprised to discover how much my gaming tastes have changed in just 7 years! And I can somehow understand why all the new titles are more action oriented, or have excellent GUI system that let you do most of the actions with very few clicks.

However, I think you can still have a good gameplay, rule system, and variety even using the good old turn-based or an hybrid approach like real-time with possibility of pause. A good example is Dragon Age, The Witcher and Drakensang. The last two in particular IMHO represent a very good example of “old-school approach” into a “new fashion” of CRPG. They have still many statistics, items, but the interface is not as clumsy as ToEE. They have lots of tactical challenges but still, you aren’t forced by a turn-based system.

Don’t get me wrong, ToEE is still a great title and I wish Troika Games would still be here today, I’m sure they would make a RPG that would kick Bioware’s ass 🙂 For my upcoming titles though, I think will try a more real-time approach, both for RPGs and also strategy/management games like the Heileen spin-off that I should start prototyping very soon.

Friday catsnowblogging: RPG side-quests

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Gilda playing in the snow – she looks like a small fox. This is a photo from my archive. Thankfully didn’t snow so much today 🙂

Today I plan to finish the “Battle Arena” side quest in Planet Stronghold. I always loved arena battles, a series of consecutive fights of increasing difficulty. I mixed several robots, aliens, enemies that usually you don’t met in the game, and obtained interesting challenges (in many cases you’ll have to use psionics to win at hard difficulty level).

Yesterday I also finished adding all the achivements, there are 18 in total. They are all non-trivial ones. I hate when in some games you start playing, and suddenly you hear a jingle and a big text appears on screen “achievement unlocked! you pressed the mouse button for the first time!” 😀 I think they should be all somehow difficult to get. The easiest ones are the “killing ones”, like the RoboKill achievement that requires you to destroy 25 robot enemies in game. The hardest one probably is “Ultimate Hero” which involves never losing a fight in the whole game!

I was also thinking if I didn’t do too much for this game. For sure it’s going to be priced at $24.95 once is finished, but perhaps would have been a wiser choice to try first with a smaller story and see if my users like this kind of RPG/story hybrid. But anyway is too late to go back now! The good thing is that 80% of enemies are finished (including their statistics and special attacks) so really all that’s left is writing the story and design the various encounters and quests.

I am scared to say this but I think I might really met my self-imposed deadline of January 2011! 8)

Meanwhile I did some preliminary gameplay testing for my Heileen spin-off game idea. As I said it wouldn’t be a VN, but more like a story-based time management game (or strategy game maybe, since it involves thinking and not just clicking fast). I believe I might be able to price this one at $14.99 only since would be easier/faster enough to produce (but still quite fun I think).

Friday catblogging: RPG game balancing

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The red cat above is Miele (in italian Honey), our oldest cat (almost 9 years old!) relaxing on the bed.

Things are going pretty well with Planet Stronghold. Yesterday I made some big changes both in the Psionic Skills and in the level-up increase of HP/PP. This latest change was made because I used a cheat mode to raise my characters up to level 20 (which probably won’t even be possible to reach in the game, since I hope it does well enough so that I can do an add-on). Then I checked how they could be the characters at level 20, how many HP/PP they had, and I allocated all the Skill Points. The difference between the various classes wasn’t much noticeable! At level 20, playing at easy level, you get 20 x 5 skill points, so 100 skill points that increase each skill by 2. So in theory I could maximize any skill – a soldier could get to level 200 of Psionics for example!

While I like not to have too much restriction, I don’t want the class pick being totally useless. So I’m thinking to change the game so that some skills have a maximum cap based on your class. For example a Soldier could never get Psionics above a value of 50, and a Scout could never get Heavy Weapon skill above 50, and so on. I think it makes more sense to put some hard limits, so you can still create somehow “hybrid classes” but not change them completely!

The second big change I made is the Psionic Skills themselves. Right now, most were focused on two simple thing: Heal and Harm. Surely, doing damage, and healing HP are the basics for ANY RPG. However the gameplay would soon be repetitive, so I introduced new changes:

  • PROTECT – “Increases friendly target’s armor value vs all kind of damage”. This way even if you don’t have the right armor, your psionics can protect you
  • DISRUPT – “Decreases enemy target’s armor value vs all kind of damage”. This way even if you don’t have the right weapon, your psionics can disrupt enemy armors
  • CURE – “Removes any negative condition (confused, shocked, etc) from friendly target.” Very useful when you encounter enemies that Shock, Fatigue or Confuse your heroes
  • SHOCK – “Shocks enemy target stunning him for XX turns. Stunned enemies won’t attack.” This is also very important, preventing enemies from attacking completely. Of course, it’s not easy to be successful, especially at lower levels.
  • FATIGUE – “Attempts to fatigue a single enemy target for XX turns, with a success rate of YY%%. Tired enemies won’t regenerate skill points.”. This is essential for some enemies that have very powerful Special Attacks. Note that you cannot prevent them from using it completely, but once they have used you can slow down their skill points regeneration.
  • RESTORE – “Brings an hero back from his knockout state, restoring XX%% of total hp.” – You can use this even at lower level, and can make really the difference from winning/losing a fight

The changes above greatly improve the gameplay especially at HARD level. At easy level, doesn’t change much (I expect only those interested in the story to play at easy level!). But already at normal, and in particular hard level you can immediately see the difference. When before you could win a fight just by “raw force”, dealing damage and healing, now you can also win with cleverly used skills.

For example at hard level winning the training test if you are a psionic is really hard when you face Roboant-06 because of his Phasor Blast. Now with Fatigue you can slow down the amount of attack, or with Shock you can prevent him from attacking completely. The restore is also interesting because it works even at lower level (even if with high failure rate).

I also changed the concentration multiplier. Before the basic heal was 10 PP, the medium 20PP and the maximum 30PP. The problem is that already at low level you could heal for big amounts using 30PP. Now the concentration multiplier is: low 10PP, medium 30PP, high 50PP. This simple change makes possible to still use the first two at lower levels (below level 7-8) but to use the big healing you need to be able to spend 50PP (and this also prevents non Psionics classes from using strong Heal/Harm psionics).

Overall I’m quite satisfied. When before you would just use Psionics to Heal/Harm, now you can decide if to save their PP to use the new Psionic Skills that can really make hard battles easier if used correctly! 🙂

I’ve also implemented several minor changes suggested by “Iselwin” in my forums, like:

  • the window color is now BLUE for your party attack/actions, and RED for enemy
  • the message windows now is independent from the main action, reducing completely some delays during battles (I also added a nice fade in/out effect)
  • you can easily compare two weapons/armors in the inventory, because I display in brackets the values of the currently equipped one

Overall was a pretty productive week! Next week will go on with the plot and try to have a version 0.8 live by end of the month with a lot of new stuff!