Category Archives: planet stronghold

Planet Stronghold 0.7 and pre-orders

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Planet Stronghold pc/mac/linuxAfter another month of work and many bug fixed and new features added, I can finally announce the alpha version 0.7 of my upcoming sci-fi RPG game Planet Stronghold! 🙂

First of all, the download links:
http://www.didone.com/testing/PSAlpha07.exe (Pc)
http://www.didone.com/testing/PSAlpha07.zip (Mac)
http://www.didone.com/testing/PSAlpha07.tar.bz2 (Linux)

The new version has many improvements and most importantly provides you more hours of fun. The story plays until the end of chapter 4, titled “The Choice” (I don’t want to spoil the fun, so you’ll have to play it to understand what is the choice about).

The game also now behaves like a demo: you can get the game now for only $9.99 instead of waiting the official release (which is scheduled for January 2011). Why I am doing this? For several reasons:

  • because this way people who are eager to play can get the game at half price (once it’s officially released, it will be priced $19.99 if not more, depending how long the game is after I finish writing the whole story).
  • player can send me their feedback through the game official forums. Not talking just about bug reports (that’s what pre-orders are usually for) but I encourage people to share their thoughts also on the gameplay, interface, and so on. I won’t rewrite the game from scratch, but I’ll read and listen to any suggestion (I’ve already changed the game quite a lot based on users feedback)
  • lastly, because pre-orders are trendy and cool 😀

In the next weeks/months I’ll keep working on it, writing more story and adding new enemies, weapons and armors. The current plan is to finish the version 0.8 for the end of November, the 0.9 for the end of December and as I said the official 1.0 release in January 2011.

So, if you want to support the development of this game, please visit the official site and download the demo or pre-order the game. The game right now for practical reasons uses a simple one-time activation, but the final version will likely use a simple fullversion no-DRM download.

Replayability in a CRPG?

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Today’s question is: does make sense to have replayability in an indie CRPG ?

After venturing deep inside the crystal castle to discuss with the supreme wizard of gameplay design face to face (that’s me looking into a mirror), I’ve come to this conclusion: No.

Let me elaborate. With a visual novel or dating sim, or even life simulation like Spirited Heart, having a gallery of several different endings could make sense. Since it’s part of their gameplay: replaying the game choosing a different path, job, skill etc. But a decent RPG should have hours and hours of fun!

Story-based RPGs like Planet Stronghold can last quite a lot of time: I am now writing the part where you venture into the wastelands, and some battles can even lead to “game over”, but in general if you lose a battle you can retry in most cases. This means that you can spend 15-20 minutes in a battle and lose it, and retry with a different party configuration / approach. Even assuming that you will win all battles at first attempt, right now there are already 30 battles in the game. Multiply 30 battles for 4 minutes each (4 minutes is an insane low amount of time, totally unrealistic!) and that makes already 2h of gameplay just for the first 3 chapters (a really low estimate as I said, since doesn’t include dialogues either). The final game will have 10 chapters.

What does this means? It means that this game once finished can last 20-25 hours or even more, like commercial AAA games. I know that SOME people probably replayed Dragon Age or Mass Effect to see different endings, but how many really? I never did that, because I don’t have the time, but even if I had it, after playing the whole game from beginning, I don’t think I would like to replay it from start.

As indie, making CGs is expensive. The ones of Planet Stronghold will be absolutely beautiful, probably the best one ever seen in one of my games. If each ending corresponds to a single CG (like happens with my other games), most people aren’t going to see them all, and that’s a pity. I feel like wasting my money for content that only a minority will be able to see.

So, I’m thinking what to do. Those CG were intented for the romance endings, so each CG would be Joshua or Lisa with one of those characters (won’t say which ones but you can guess). I thought about two possible solutions:

1) I was thinking instead if to integrate them in the story, like The Witcher did (a CG in certain specific point of the plot, with voiceovers, I think that worked really well) or 2) at least make it possible to see them allfrom a certain point of the game.

For example, while each character relationship will influence how well he/she fights into the battle, at a certain point of the plot you will be able to save and from that point you can reach any possible romance ending, no matter what you’ve done before. That way at least player could have only to replay something like the last 2 chapters or so.

I think this solution might work well and that’s the one I’m probably going to adopt, since I want everyone to be able to see all the various endings without having to replay from start.

Obviously, since you pick the gender at beginning of game, if you want to see the ending of the opposite gender you WILL have to restart from scratch with that one 🙂

Planet Stronghold status of development – September 2010

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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:

  1. 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
  2. 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)
  3. 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!)
  4. 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!
  5. 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 🙂

New Planet Stronghold Alpha ready!

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The download links are the same:
http://www.didone.com/games/PSDemo.exe
http://www.didone.com/games/PSDemo.zip
http://www.didone.com/games/PSDemo.tar.bz2

Note that since I updated to the latest stable Ren’Py release (6.11) I was forced to give up autoupdating from older versions. So you have to redownload this whole thing again, even if you downloaded previous versions. Sorry about that.

From now on I plan to use the autoupdater for all the next updates. Unless I get many users having troubles with it, in that case I probably will give up with that system. But so far only a minority had troubles with the autopatcher and the previous version was more buggy than it is now!

The things improved are MANY. The most visible is battle feedback, with each damage type represented on the battle, and several minor improvements like the ability to attack by just clicking at the enemy target (much faster than using the Attack button every time). Another major change is the difficulty level. You can choose between 3 different levels:

  • easy – what casual player should choose. Pick this if you’re more interested in reading the story than actually having fun with the battles. This is NOT recommended to anyone even a bit familiar with RPG or more complex games
  • normal – what I suggest to use. The really difficult battles won’t be many, especially in the Alpha so far, since fights get tougher as the game story goes on. Also, while you’re in the base you’ll start each battle with HP/PP fully restored. This might change in future though (for sure if you get outside)
  • hard – if you’re familiar with RPG, you must pick this option. Seriously. Otherwise you won’t have any fun in the easier modes. In this setting, even if you should be able to pass most battles, you might face some difficulties in keeping all the heroes alone, or have to change strategy in certain fights

the difficulty influences enemy attacks, hit points, the number of skill points you get when leveling up, and several minor things.

Regarding the plot, you get to know almost all the main characters, and get new quests. Though you can’t finish any quest for now in the Alpha, you can make progress in some. I have also changed the quest system: before it sued a True/False method, meaning that you could either succeed or fail a quest. Now, you can fail it, but to solve a quest you need to complete several steps in sequence, which is a method more interesting and that increases game longevity.

You’ll also be able to see how the level up works before finishing the alpha 🙂

That’s it, if you find any bug or have any suggestion, you can reach me on twitter, email, forums. However the preferred method is in my forums, since this way everyone can see the discussion and make suggestions/remarks about what is being said.

The revenge of point’n’click adventures

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I’ve always loved point’n’click adventures, of all kinds. First person view, or 3rd person (with the characters walking on the screen).

Unfortunately I’ve never been able to make one, because they are probably the kind of game that require most art assets. Also, I wasn’t sure that there was a market big enough to justify that kind of investment. However, recently things seems to have changed. Not just indies, but even some bigger studios are starting to produce adventure games, even if most of them are full 3d ones, real-time.

I really don’t like 3d real time. It might be good for certain settings, and surely gives more freedom so you can have very complex puzzles. But still I think 2d painted art is the best you can have in an adventure game. A good solution/compromise is 2d pre-rendered backdrops with 3d real-time sprites though.

Does it means that I’m thinking about making an adventure game? Well, for now I want to finish the current projects. Then, I want to experiment with some online games.

But next year, depending also how some things go, I might start thinking about it seriously (depends also if my favourite artist Rebecca will have enough time to do it)!

In the past I’ve experimented with lots of genres, and still I like to experiment, however the main kind of games I like are story-based games: RPGs, adventures and all the VN variants (dating sim, etc). I believe an adventure based on Vera Blanc character might be interesting, with many puzzles and horror-themed situations (zombies, vampires, and so on).

Now better I stop thinking about it and focus on finishing my current games though! 😀 A new alpha of Planet Stronghold should be ready next week for sure (just waiting for artist to finish a few background images).