Category Archives: planet stronghold

Forums gone and Autoleveling enemies

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First a quick news: after thinking about it for several weeks, I finally decided to shut down my forums. As you can see, the blog now takes the place of the forums. So the correct URL for the blog is: http://www.winterwolves.net.
I’ve decided to replace the forums with my blog because:

  • the forums were almost empty anyway
  • the amount of spamming, despite I had tried every possible measure was insane (people spamming manually the forums – nothing you can do about that)
  • I’ve decided that I have better things to do with my time, like making new games 😀
  • people can comment and have direct contact with me with the blog anyway


update: I reinstalled my forums. Too many sites where linking to specific threads, like the walkthrough ones. So I decided to keep them, but will make them invite only. For direct discussion, better use the blog 🙂

Ok, now about the interesting stuff: I’ve been thinking to use autoleveling enemies in my upcoming RPG game Planet Stronghold. But what are exactly autoleveling enemies?
You know in RPGs, you usually start at level 1. You encounter the first enemies, and they’re usually challenging. But once you raise your level, once you’re level 10, if you get back to those level 1 enemies, they should be a piece of cake.

In my game, I’m planning to do like this: the enemies will mantain their original challenge rating even if your character/party levels up. An enemy that was tough at level 1, would still be a good challenge at level 10 (not as tough, but not totally harmless either).
Why I am thinking to adopt this system? Easy, because this way I can provide a constant challenge to the player. There’s nothing worse than having a random encounter and say “oh no, again those stupid easy enemies that will be killed with 1 hit.”
I am still thinking if to allow the player to choose between auto-leveling on/off in options for example, and I plan to use a global difficulty level for the game, so those who don’t like challenging fights don’t need to worry.

Moving forward with Flower Shop and Planet Stronghold

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The Flower Shop game is near completion. The farming sim is 100% done, and the game is being tested. Fixed some minor typos, and adjusted some gameplay elements, but in practice we’re waiting for 3 missing backgrounds and the beautiful (even if I haven’t yet seen it) main menu from Deji.

Also, I’m finally moving forward with my other game Planet Stronghold. I got a new artist that’s going to do all the enemies in the game. Below you see a sketch of one of the first enemies, a robot-terrorist that we could call “RoboAnt-06”. (this because it vaguely resembles an ant!)

Then she created small variations of the base model, each one with a different weapon. In Planet Stronghold the combat will be focused on damage type, there are 5 in total: energy,explosive,armor penetrating, acid, psionic. Below, a screenshot of the in-game battle showing the new robot that replaced my ugly 3d renders of the first WIP screenshots 🙂

Note how the left arm of the robot has a different weapon. The one on the left has a gatling cannon firing armor piercing ammo, while the one on the right has a powerful laser cannon! I also got 10 new shiny backgrounds for the game that will show in future screenshots (yes I gave up on the idea of using pre-rendered 3d backgrounds).

What’s next ?

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Well, today got an email from Kim, the girl doing Heileen voice that assured me she will resume working on it once the finals at university are done. So I’m still confident about a late January / Mid-February release of the voice add-on for Heileen 2.

Then, the Flower Shop game is nearing completion, I’m programming the farm-sim minigame, which is turning out rather difficult (I want to make something decent to play). Deji, the game main artist, is drawing the final screens and they’re really beautiful, probably the best ones I’ve made for any of my games so far 🙂

The RPG game Planet Stronghold project is on hold for the moment, since the character artist disappeared, right when I needed some more characters to start building the main system of the game (doing missions, selecting the party, and so on). However the backgrounds are being done right now, and the sketches looks promising.

Lastly, I have a top-secret project going on for my Winter Wolves brand. Really topsecret since nobody knows about it (not even my most strict collaborators). It involves a VERY original art-style, which I think was never tried in a computer game before, and a interesting couple of… special detectives. I am trying to find the right artist for this, and I’m still experimenting with some prototypes etc to see if the result could be interesting.

More info coming soon…

Leveling Up

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I’ve been playing Fallout 3 on Xbox a lot lately. A thing I’ve noticed is that leveling up is done in the JRPG style, and not in the old AD&D one. For those unfamiliar, let me translate: JRPG usually have FAST leveling up. It means that you will level up quickly and constantly during the game, opposed to the AD&D system, where leveling up is a real “event”. I still remember the old SSI games based on the AD&D rules, the early levels were even acceptable, but then… going from level 10 to 11 was a real pain 🙂

To be honest I was a fan of the AD&D. Until recently. I mean, is cool that every level up is something unique, that brings new perks/features to the character. But on the other hand, I really like constant reward to the player. In Fallou 3 (but also in other games like Everquest 2) for example you can experience points by just discovering new locations. Or every trap/lock that you manage to disarm/unlock without a key. Beside of course completing quests and killing enemies!

It’s cool to see the EXP bar whenever you do one of those steps. It feels “right”. It’s like the game is telling you “YOU RULE”. I fell in love with it, and I am going to implement something similar to my VN/RPG game Planet Stronghold. There won’t be a full 3d virtual world, but I’ll fill it with many quests and also will make sure there are places in which you can use the various non-combat skills.

Speaking of which, two new screenshots: the skills screen, and the quests screen. They should both be final, no more change to skills 🙂

Visual Novels in AAA games market

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No, outside Japan there aren’t any AAA-commercial quality visual novel games, of course. BUT – and it’s sa big but, the visual novel elements are starting to pour into the normal AAA genres. Some examples? Mass Effect, The Witcher, and probably more I haven’t played.

Ok, but why you say this? What exactly defines a visual novel, and differentiate it from a normal RPG game? Well in the cases above is really difficult, but I think I could say that while RPGs had NPC and quests already as a feature, the way those two games present the dialogues and the choices makes them much more close to visual novel than other games. Indeed, there aren’t simply quests: first, there is LOT of dialogue. Those games are fully voiced (well, like all my future ones) so that helps a lot. Many people don’t like when there’s much text to read, but if you present the same text under the form of a movie/cartoon, with moving actors, scenes and voices, it’s VERY different (in practice is the difference between reading a book or watching a tv movie). In those games, there are MANY choices. Both on Mass Effect and The Witcher you can influence lots of characters/factions, and in the end, really change your ending.

RPGs always had the possibility to make choices, but to influence the world/characters around you and “unlock” different endings? No, that’s more a visual novel thing, to me 😉

Both those games were huge successes, selling million of copies. Of course, it’s not JUST because of the visual novel component: but I like to think that it played a big role. Yes, you can have visual novels features in a AAA game and not bore the western gaming public: you just need to insert them into a context with many other gameplay types (shooters, strategy, simulations). That’s what I’m going to do with The Flower Shop and Planet Stronghold 🙂