Background:
What I don't like about RPGs is grinding. Where the challenge is trivialized because you can just do a basic action over and over to get as many resources as you want. The only video game RPGs I've really enjoyed are Nethack and Crawl. You effectively can not grind in those games, and they're incredibly challenging. You're constantly managing your resources, racing against the clock and fleeing from monsters.

I didn't see any way to replicate this in a Starcraft RPG though without doing some sort of incredibly complicated randomly generated dungeon system. I really wasn't too excited about the idea of RPGs in general, especially starcraft RPGs, until I played Spellsword. Now Spellsword still involves a lot of grinding, and that's why I haven't beaten it and I don't plan to, however, the very fact that you have a limited food supply made it a map that was challenging to a slight degree. Spellsword demonstrated to me that it was possible for a "proper" RPG (as opposed to an action RPG like 5 Samurai) to be enjoyable. Spellsword was my inspiration, but the concept for this map is nothing like spellsword.

Mission briefing:
In a dream and angel comes to you and tells you that within a year a great evil will awake from the northeast, and you alone have the power to prevent the destruction which will follow.

Concept:
The current time is displayed by the countdown timer. The current date is displayed by the leaderboard. The passage of time is very important in this RPG. Disaster will occur if the great evil is allowed to awaken. There are cycles of day and night (and they might even progress as the seasons pass). Over time prices will change, ships will travel, holidays will be celebrated and most importantly plot will develop. This allows the possibility of plot branching. For instance if a person at the shipyard tells you that the ship left yesterday and won't be back for a few weeks, that means that the ship actually left yesterday, and that if you can find some way to get to that town a day earlier, then you can get on that ship.

Important points:
*A single player map
*You are a zealot
*Spellsword style armor system
*Resting at the inn takes eight hours

Character progression:
There are no experience points. Your character will grow stronger by acquiring abilities, items and upgrades. These cost gold and alchemy ingredients. For example to acquire a basic suit of leather armor, you can either provide the blacksmith with a bunch of gold, or with some gold and a lot of leather. There are numerous special abilities and spells. For example you can specialize in fire spells, and upgrade your fire spell units (which are terran air), or you could specialize in archery, and upgrade your bow related units (which are terran infantry). You could also walk along both paths, and there might even be some enchantment or something in the game that is helpful to people who are skilled with the bow and the flame.

Alchemy:
I haven't worked out the details of this, but the idea is to avoid exact alchemical formulas in the nature of Spellsword. What I'm going to work towards, is having some sort of fire spell "seed", and then depending on what you throw into that, you'll get varying levels of power. For instance a spell's duration, or a spells cooldown time, are both things that can be varied. So for example, the seed ingredients will get you the spell, and then based on the amount of steel you put in, the cooldown time will be greater or lesser.

The fine details for this whole thing will be worked out on an item by item basis.

Enemy spawning:
I'm going to work to make the spawning system more realistic than normal. One example I have now that I like very much, is that at a certain time of day, a skiff will land at the bottom left section of the map, and some bandits will get out. The bandits will walk to a spot near the path and prepare to ambush the player. When the sun sets, the bandits will get back in their skiff and leave. If you kill the bandits that have "spawned" then the skiff will immediately take off and bandits won't appear at that spot the next day, because their leader (who is the one sailing the skiff) will be busy recruiting new bandits. If you kill the skiff using a fire spell for instance, then the bandits will never "respawn" again.

Progress:
I was pretty shocked to see myself to past the planning stage. I'm currently working on the demo, which should include most of, or all, of the structural framework. Right now I'm going to put the finishes touches on the plans for the framework that I'll need to make the village and forest path playable. Then I'm going to do the triggering needed for that basic framework. Then I'm going to do the triggering needed to make the village and forest path playable.

Screenshots:
The terrain sketch. The bottom left is the starting village. Then you have the forest path. Then the port. The high ground on the left is the path to the abandoned mine. The incomplete upper area will consist of the abandoned mine, and the technical areas, such as the insides of buildings, item storage etc. The path leads out of the north end of the port and off the screen (where the demo ends).



What the forest path currently looks like.



Post has been edited 5 time(s), last time on Jun 13 2009, 3:46 am by scwizard.

the story is pretty basic, and the terrain is pretty basic the concepts are great though and I really really like the idea of being on time for things.

That's not the story that's the mission briefing Of course it wouldn't be any fun if everything turned out completely as expected.

The story and the terrain right now are at a framework stage. I have a few plot twists and characters planned at this point, but the story isn't anywhere near done. I'm not sure how elaborate or otherwise the story will end up being, so I don't want to promise anything at this point aside from at least one plot twist and at least two different endings.

As for the terrain, what I have now is just a sketch of how things are laid out. The next major update will be when I've finished placing all the various stuff that gets in your way, as well as essential doodading (such as putting trees in the forest). After that I'm going to start with the triggers. The fine detail of the terrain will come sometime after I have something playable. Although I'm many steps away from the end result, even the end result probably won't be as impressive as the terrain you've done.

I smell what your stepping in. what would be neat is if when you died you could decide to go back in time or stay in the current time and resurrect.

Err, there probably won't be resurrection and definitely won't be time travel.

If I have any kind of time manipulation of any sort, it will be some sort of late game time stop artifact.

Also what do you mean by "I smell what you're stepping in"?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 12 2009, 11:17 pm by scwizard.

Whatever floats your boat matey. And i smell what your stepping in means i understand.

What exactly is it that you were saying you understand? Just wanting to make sure you actually do understand it.

understanding that there will be more to the story then what i read.

Overall good ideas, need some terrain work (scmdraft )
I like the concepts in which its all time based, aswell as nice zelda style with no levels.
Good luck and have fun

The forest path should look less lame now. This is probably what the final version is going to look like. I don't really see any ways I could go about spicing it up.

This is what the abandoned mine entrance/exit currently looks like:



If it looks like that's done in staredit, then that just means it's well done I guess

Added a section on enemy spawning. Check it out

Good luck and have fun on future ambitions,
anyways... you should try to do what I do as it is incredibly hard (try to give constructive criticism)

If pointing out blockiness isn't constructive, I don't know what is

This sounds like a really neat RPG. I love the idea of it.
I can't wait till the demo comes out. It'll be a cool map, even if just for the concept.

Well It was just the part you said above other then that it was a kind gesture lol,
anyways how is you map seems like you might have trouble with your triggers but im sure you'll do well.

Fallout 3 time system/oblivian system ftw lol?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 14 2009, 10:33 pm by Tempz.

You have great Ideas, but in all honesty it doesn't look like you're ready to put them into a map.

I mean, Okay- that came out wrong.

It looks as if you need to take some more time laying out the structure of your map. The paths look very clunky and the town looks like it was just slapped together in 2 minutes. You should try to plan things out in a manner such as thinking:

"Okay, if I am playing right now, what kind of cool stuff would I want to do? How would I want to use my abilities?" It seems like you're not leaving any room for exploration / experimentation to the player. My advice is to evaluate when you have a linear path- and condense it to make the player's actions more crucial so that they won't focus on the linearity of said path.

What you should do is have narrower paths when the terrain is linear, and more vast areas for the people to explore off to the side to find items/enemies/treasure.

imo the beginning should be kind of linear.

You might have some good advice, but I don't quite see what you mean. Could you give me an example of a map that does what you're talking about?

Especially an example of a better done town. "The town looks like it was slapped together in two minutes" isn't very helpful to me.

"condense it to make the player's actions more crucial so that they won't focus on the linearity of said path"
I don't get what you're trying to say here.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 17 2009, 1:54 am by scwizard.

I Could help you with the terrain design if you like...

Anyways this seems like one of those really good rpgs that gets rejected because the fact that there is not presentation to it.
Like i said i think there are 2 major parts of a game, presentation and gameplay, the presentation gets them hooked while the gameplay keeps them playing.
I won't have any fancy terrain but ill give you some terrain pallets if you like...
(Terrain maps) (Unique Terrain maps) (Ramps) --> only can be copy and pasted with scmdraft.

Overall the idea is 9/10 since the timed element might get annoying ect...
But you should include a night and day feature thus map revelers placed over the map illuminated the surroundings

Place the map revealer then
"Player X" goes near it with center location trigger


Of course there are substitutes such as giving the revealer to the player,
aswell as having center loctions on the map revealers but that would lag the game.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 17 2009, 2:14 am by Tempz.

No thanks, we have different styles. Also I'm not interested in doing a collaborative project at the moment.

The city could use some improvement, but I'm actually quite happy with the forest path and I'm unlikely to change anything in it unless someone gives me very specific advice.

I really like your concept of needing to be on time, as samsizzle stated, for the rest - for now - I find it very basic. ;P
8 hours in the game = how many seconds in RL?