SharpWolf
2015-01-25, 02:13 PM
Hello, fellow playgrounders!
It's been a while since I've posted anything here (though I have been lurking around and watching a few let's plays)! I'm not entirely sure whether this fits better here or in the "Arts and crafts" section of the forum, but I'm going to take a chance since this is equal parts about gaming and writing...
So, I'm a big fan of interactive fiction like Fallen London, Academagia, King of Dragon Pass, Long Live the Queen and gamebooks series like Lonewolf and Dragon Warriors. My little brother writes a lot, and we have decided to join forces to create our very own interactive fiction platform for fun and (very hypothetically) profits!
You see, I am a software engineer and I love making video game-ish experiments in my spare time and, since my experience with graphics and animation is limited, I wanted to try to make something that wouldn't be too complicated, wouldn't require me to learn how to use a complete game engine and allow me to focus my work on the story and game mechanics. So the choice was obvious: we're going to make a text-based adventure / role-playing game.
I would like, however, to make this a very polished and interesting text-based RPG. I have a small budget and a friend who has agreed to draw full-scale pictures to help describe the environments / scenes / events (à la King of Dragon Pass) and I'm going to licence some music from royalty-free websites. The engine is in Java with Lua scripting, the text itself is going to be formatted in full-fledged HTML with complete CSS support, thus allowing for a lot of cool and interesting little tricks, and I would like for the "finished product" to have the following features:
• Challenges / dice rolls / etc. with complex calculations as necessary
• NPCs with their own factions, relationships, abilities, lore, etc., and with whom the player will be able to interact in various ways
• A "contest" mechanic allowing for complex challenges between the player and NPCs or the environment (for combat, vehicle chases, special cases of exploration, etc.)
• Inventory management with equipment and a bartering system
• Quests which will (hopefully) be more interesting than the usual grindy "fetch X" or "kill Y" like solving investigations and riddles, developing relationships, becoming a master at a chosen craft, researching fictional SCIENCE.... so many possibilities!
• Time-, location- and inventory-based random events
• A complete journal with lore entries for as much stuff as possible (concepts, characters, locations, events, etc.), along with the ability for the player to take his own notes
• Special actions like choosing a picture from a list or a mini-parser to allow more complex commands where relevant
• Multi-lingual support
• As moddable as humanly possible (complete campaigns, sub-modules, translations, interface skins and adjustments, you name it!)
• And whatever other interesting stuff I can think of without getting too much feature creep in there ;-)
So here we are, after six months of work, with a basic but functional engine, the beginning of a campaign, and in serious need of constructive feedback on both the game and the story (along with some playtesters!), so I thought the Playground might be the right place to get it -- please do note however that it's still way too soon for us to decide if we're going to make a commercial effort at it, it's quite possible that this might end up as a nice side-project next to our professional "real" lives. If there is interest for it, though, I will post here pieces of lore and demos when I'll have something playable.
Here's what the whole thing looks like so far (don't mind the current color scheme of the GUI, I know it's ugly and it's only temporary :smalltongue: ):
http://i1299.photobucket.com/albums/ag67/BBLamarre/concept_rp1_zps9d6bb9bd.jpg (http://s1299.photobucket.com/user/BBLamarre/media/concept_rp1_zps9d6bb9bd.jpg.html)
http://i1299.photobucket.com/albums/ag67/BBLamarre/concept_rp2_zps7923170e.jpg (http://s1299.photobucket.com/user/BBLamarre/media/concept_rp2_zps7923170e.jpg.html)
And here's some of the music I'm thinking about buying for our cool meta-physical-exotic-sci-fi campaign:
http://www.royaltyfreekings.com/store/action-fight-music-tracks/genesis/
http://www.royaltyfreekings.com/store/atmospheric-dreamy-ambient/nag-champa/
http://www.royaltyfreekings.com/store/action-fight-music-tracks/moon-goddess/
http://www.royaltyfreekings.com/store/action-fight-music-tracks/acadia/
Anyone interested?
It's been a while since I've posted anything here (though I have been lurking around and watching a few let's plays)! I'm not entirely sure whether this fits better here or in the "Arts and crafts" section of the forum, but I'm going to take a chance since this is equal parts about gaming and writing...
So, I'm a big fan of interactive fiction like Fallen London, Academagia, King of Dragon Pass, Long Live the Queen and gamebooks series like Lonewolf and Dragon Warriors. My little brother writes a lot, and we have decided to join forces to create our very own interactive fiction platform for fun and (very hypothetically) profits!
You see, I am a software engineer and I love making video game-ish experiments in my spare time and, since my experience with graphics and animation is limited, I wanted to try to make something that wouldn't be too complicated, wouldn't require me to learn how to use a complete game engine and allow me to focus my work on the story and game mechanics. So the choice was obvious: we're going to make a text-based adventure / role-playing game.
I would like, however, to make this a very polished and interesting text-based RPG. I have a small budget and a friend who has agreed to draw full-scale pictures to help describe the environments / scenes / events (à la King of Dragon Pass) and I'm going to licence some music from royalty-free websites. The engine is in Java with Lua scripting, the text itself is going to be formatted in full-fledged HTML with complete CSS support, thus allowing for a lot of cool and interesting little tricks, and I would like for the "finished product" to have the following features:
• Challenges / dice rolls / etc. with complex calculations as necessary
• NPCs with their own factions, relationships, abilities, lore, etc., and with whom the player will be able to interact in various ways
• A "contest" mechanic allowing for complex challenges between the player and NPCs or the environment (for combat, vehicle chases, special cases of exploration, etc.)
• Inventory management with equipment and a bartering system
• Quests which will (hopefully) be more interesting than the usual grindy "fetch X" or "kill Y" like solving investigations and riddles, developing relationships, becoming a master at a chosen craft, researching fictional SCIENCE.... so many possibilities!
• Time-, location- and inventory-based random events
• A complete journal with lore entries for as much stuff as possible (concepts, characters, locations, events, etc.), along with the ability for the player to take his own notes
• Special actions like choosing a picture from a list or a mini-parser to allow more complex commands where relevant
• Multi-lingual support
• As moddable as humanly possible (complete campaigns, sub-modules, translations, interface skins and adjustments, you name it!)
• And whatever other interesting stuff I can think of without getting too much feature creep in there ;-)
So here we are, after six months of work, with a basic but functional engine, the beginning of a campaign, and in serious need of constructive feedback on both the game and the story (along with some playtesters!), so I thought the Playground might be the right place to get it -- please do note however that it's still way too soon for us to decide if we're going to make a commercial effort at it, it's quite possible that this might end up as a nice side-project next to our professional "real" lives. If there is interest for it, though, I will post here pieces of lore and demos when I'll have something playable.
Here's what the whole thing looks like so far (don't mind the current color scheme of the GUI, I know it's ugly and it's only temporary :smalltongue: ):
http://i1299.photobucket.com/albums/ag67/BBLamarre/concept_rp1_zps9d6bb9bd.jpg (http://s1299.photobucket.com/user/BBLamarre/media/concept_rp1_zps9d6bb9bd.jpg.html)
http://i1299.photobucket.com/albums/ag67/BBLamarre/concept_rp2_zps7923170e.jpg (http://s1299.photobucket.com/user/BBLamarre/media/concept_rp2_zps7923170e.jpg.html)
And here's some of the music I'm thinking about buying for our cool meta-physical-exotic-sci-fi campaign:
http://www.royaltyfreekings.com/store/action-fight-music-tracks/genesis/
http://www.royaltyfreekings.com/store/atmospheric-dreamy-ambient/nag-champa/
http://www.royaltyfreekings.com/store/action-fight-music-tracks/moon-goddess/
http://www.royaltyfreekings.com/store/action-fight-music-tracks/acadia/
Anyone interested?