Devlog 16
Added 2022-12-12 22:42:36 +0000 UTCHere's devlog 16! Some controversial changes, I'm very curious how everyone feels about it...
Comments
Yes! It'll lean more towards fast paced combat, probably the change I was most on the fence about... But at the end of the day, I think it'll be more interesting/challenging. I think it also yields to the upscaling a bit better - if we're going to have a huge island with enemies getting tougher as we expand outwards/downwards, weapons will have to get stronger and stronger. With grid based combat, that means if you go into a new area, you can potentially still survive if you're careful enough, you'd just have to not get hit and hit each enemy 20 times to kill them with your weak weapon.. I don't really want players going out and hitting an enemy 30 times to get ahead. This could be avoided by carefully gating off areas, but I don't like the sound of that as much as allowing the player to explore and realize which regions are out of their depth And I 110% agree about the procedural generation, there's nothing worse than a game that feels lifeless and repetitive. I see the greatest challenges going forward as: 1) Making the world not feel bland and generated 2) Making combat engaging and fresh (there are so many top down combat games, I hope to come up with something interesting, or at least as good as some of the others) 3) Coming up with a more unique crafting/magic system that's well suited to the goblins. The whole deal with goblins is tinkering, I need to reflect that in having a very customizable crafting system 4) Implementing multiplayer (haven't done it, but after a lot of research I think I can do it) I'm planning on viewing the procedural generation as more for the terrain. The hardest part for me was laying out the tens of thousands of trees, flowers, stumps, water blocks, etc.. It would be nice to make a convincing island that then gets populated with mostly pre-made attractions. Right now I'm hoping to get away with something like: step 1) Generate a base island, ideally very organic unlike my perlin-only sample 2) add in some major regions, like a big river, a big clump of mountainous stone, the clearing for the goblin town, etc. Kinda terraform with the staples that each island should have 3) Populate biomes with the correct stuff (flatten out the desert and add all the base stuff like cacti or whatever, a snowy region, a jungle region, etc At this point we have a lifeless, boring, but somewhat realistic looking "abandoned island" vibe. The fourth pass will be where most of the life comes in: 4) Add in caves with treasure, abandoned ruins, oasis in the desert, human encampments, a giant human ship, giant hollow tree somewhere, pyramids, other friendly races maybe, a giant bee hive, mushroom groves, who knows! This is where my effort directly correlates to a feeling of uniqueness, so I suppose I'll just keep ramping up the details here until I feel like it's good enough. I imagine this is where 95% of the work comes in. And it could be a lot of that will be creating pre-made rooms with traps and whatnot, I'll have to do some tests and see what I like. Maybe it'll be easier to just make 20 dungeons than to make a system that pieces together 100 different pre-made rooms. But rest assured I'm focused on making it not feel lifeless, because I definitely feel that. I've been through enough skyrim crypts to know it gets old after the first few times ;-; Especially when you see the same puzzles or enemies over and over. I have a few ideas on how to make it work though and think it should be doable And I think we'll regenerate islands each time! Add a bit of replay value since a lot of the fun will be finding hidden stuff scattered around.. may not be as interesting the 2nd time if you know where all the treasure troves are or whatever
Watt Designs
2022-12-14 23:37:32 +0000 UTCI think in the end, as the dev, you know what's best for your game. I'm excited for it either way. :) Does this mean you will also move away from the more puzzle-focused approach to combat towards reaction-based combat? I personally feel ambivalent about procedural generation. I play many games that use it and it allows for some cool exploration and coincidences. At the same time it can make games feel a bit empty/repetitive because there is no human intention behind environmental design. But I think a mix of hand-made and procedural areas could work very well for an RPG. I've been wondering why procedural generation has become so popular, but after hearing your explanation, I assume scaling is a major factor. Are you planning on generating the areas once and then they stay the same throughout the game, or will there be some areas that look different every time you enter? EDIT: I wanted to add that I love the Goblin-centrig art direction. :D
Luisa
2022-12-14 08:01:05 +0000 UTC
