Sooo game idea...

I've decided my hand at trying to actually make a game even though most of my ideas are way to big for me to do so I've had to try to come up with something that allows me to actually not care enough to try to get it to work...

I know that sounds weird, but whatever...


Basically the idea is an RPG that has a story that can be broken up into a series of patches/DLC that can end or expand at any point, but also each patch can use previous patches to create an immense and in depth experience.

So the first question is how do I creates a story that allows for a large world, but keep the player limited in what they can explore while more of the story is thought up... and how do you solve the whole problem i have with you being a total nitwit for someone who has lived in this world all their life...

The answer is, this basic premise...
You are transported "magically" to an alien ship who takes you to the galacic capital where the council is left to decide what to do with you. Eventually it is decided that you will act as a "spy" / "peacemaker" as you are an unknwown and thus are more likely to be unconspicuous if you are curious about the happenings of the world. After a test run in the capital you are given increasingly more and more dangerous missions and as such are given access to more of the galaxy.

Basically... think ME + Farscape + some crime drama or something like that...

The galactic government will pay you and you are able to take up side side jobs so that you can upgrade equipment and transportation... originally you start having to pay to be transported, but eventually you should be able to get a large ship and mechs and such...

The obvious path for the story to take is that "you" want to get home so you try figure out how you got there and how to get back and while you do you get wrapped up in conspiracies and such.

How does this limit you? Well if you take the idea of "jump gates" and say that they can be turned on and off and mix that with border patrols you can say that the government must give you access to travel between jumpgates which makes it so you must earn access which means from a story line perspective you only have to develop the capital at first and then put a "to be continued" so that each new planet or what not is new DLC that can advance the story.



I want to keep things within my ability to do them so I'm trying to create a unique turn based system of a sort.

Currently my idea is that you can have up to 15 characters in your party, but these 15 characters are AI controlled, can't always come along, and are divided into groups of 3. Only your main character is self controlled. You give general commands to the rest of the group...

Basically I'm taking the idea that there are 5 basic roles in a battle situation.
Attacker, Defender, Healer, (de)buffer, and Leader. Each of these roles can be taken up by various jobs and can characters can shift between roles based on need. Different roles in the groups effect how long it takes to cast/attack and how effective it is.

So how do you control your group?
You can give your entire party or each group a "mode"

Heavy Attack - All members will use riskier attacks that take longer to charge or take longer to recover from...however if you have a defender in your group they will defend these guys which will help the recovery rate of basic attackers and the potency of magic casters due to them not having to worry about dodging.

Light Attack - All members will use quick cautious attacks... basically so they don't leave themselves exposed but don't hit anything hard.

Defend - Puts all members into a defensive position. Defenders focus completely on blocking. Attackers switch to countering. Mage types switch to regen and healing as primary.

Experiment - Party attack in different patterns and use light attacks to test effectiveness of various attacks. This is important because once you learn the weaknesses of enemies characters will remember it and try it against similar mobs to try to take them down effectively.


I think this is a cool idea and pretty easy to implement...what do you guys think?

The concept of only directly controlling one character is a horrible idea, even in commercially viable games it's basically a death sentence (see FF XIII).

Final Fantasy 12 was solid in terms of combat options : you can setup commands for each character and/or directly command them. Forcing the players into a lack of control is not fun. Such a move only really works in games like Civilization where it would be less fun to have to choose individual attacks for a legion of 200 troops or something.

What you have listed basically sounds like FF 12's setup without the ability to choose specific actions for each mode, much less manually control each character. This basically means you are showing the player a world of potential and then teasing them with an extreme lack of control. Players like playing games, not letting the AI do it for them - those are called movies.

The problem with FF12 is that the gambit system is at first useless because there is too few commands and later boring because there is no reason to play at all.

The problem with FF13 is that you aren't controlling their strategies or what they are doing but rather what job they are and often anything beyond their original job their useless...and or overpowered.

The difference with this idea is that you are acting as the party leader and the AI is smart from the beginning. Further, this isn't about jobs, but rather strategy. Also I've always thought it was kinda dumb that I'm playing a warrior yet I'm supposed to know all the elemental weaknesses of mobs... and even if I'm a mage character why should I the player have to remember what the character should have already learned. i also always thought it was dumb that the characters wouldn't react dynamically to what is going on... If I have a mage who is charging up for a massive attack and then suddenly one of my chars are about to die because the enemy had a massive attack why wouldn't they shift that charge into a healing spell that they could get off right then... that seems more reasonable.

I also think that controlling even a few characters gets tedious and boring so this solves that to degree while still having multiple chars. Also the reason for having so many chars is cuz it can work and i always felt that not being able to take however many chars you want to is odd. I also intend to make some place where taking more or less characters will be harder or easier based on that and it won't be just one way where more = easier...sometimes more will be harder.

But that being said, do you think it would be worthwhile to add in a way to have control over all the characters? i think that is boring micromanagement, but what do you guys think?


also, I'm going to be writing this in python >.> I'm currently refreshing myself on everything, but I think I know just about everything i need to know to do this.

My idea is to have the various styles of gameplay (turn-based with complete control, control one character and decide AI of characters, etc) to be selectable from a menu. That way if someone tires of slaying regular mobs, they don't have to worry about the other characters until the boss battle.

The problem you'll have with wanting "as big a group of friends" as you want is scaling the difficulty level. There's a reason most games limit how many people are in your party.

Not having to control every party member sounds good on paper, but even a smart AI is still dumber than a human player, no matter how well you can program. It also won't account for doing things outside the box.

I am a small-time game developer myself. For me, it's a hobby, but I have built a few small games for corporate clients, mainly for use in the classroom. I think it's a very exciting field.

Continue to develop your idea. Keep a journal of your concepts and continue to write them down as you think of new elements. You may find it useful one day.

In terms of general recommendations, I think that you are correct: your idea is bigger than what is likely possible to be built by a lone developer. If you are interested in learning game design, I recommend exploring game building with simple concepts and building upward. Puzzle games, in particular, offer a lot of practical experience to help you get your feet wet.

My first games were written in Flash, which I found easier to learn than something abstract because it is so concrete and visual. Unfortunately, Flash isn't free. However, you can use Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express to write games for Silverlight for free (core product: http://www.microsoft.com/express/Web/). You need both the developer and the Silverlight plugin to staart building the game. That is what I am using on my current, probably-never-to-be-finished game project.

There is also the XNA toolkit for Microsoft Visual Studio Express you can use to build XBox games and installed games for Windows PCs. Keep in mind that the "Web" version is different than the "Normal" version, and that "Express" refers to the free, feature-lite versions as opposed to the version that costs money. It is however totally possible to build a game in the free versions.

I will share one piece of advice I was given when I was new to this hobby, which was "stay away from custom built RPGs--you will never finish." I don't mean that as discouragent. Tools like RPGMaker might make an RPG possible by supplying the basic tools, but an epic-scale game (even as "small" as some of the older Square titles) is incredibly time consuming as well as easy to accidentally make boring.

I will also add that AI, in general, is an absolute nightmare unless the person writing it is deeply looped in to the design of the game. It is simply a fact that good AI and complex gameplay are at odds with each other. I would recommend putting control of the groups somehow in the hands of the player.

My only problem is people tend to use crap text books and use big examples and/or don't explain what something is used for in tutorials... Like Vectors... I know they're important, roughly what they do mathematically, but I have no idea how their used game wise.

The idea in this post I know how to do everything save for patch a program which i made need later on, but there are other ways around that. The only reason I haven't actually built a game outside of tutorials and classwork I've had is simply because there are no good tutorials explaining APIs and graphics which has always been my problem point.

What I said in terms of difficulty has more to do with the fact that most my game ideas involved 1to1 world/universe scale, 3D, or I simply cannot produce the quality of art that I want for the project and care too much about it to have crappy art. This project is modular, not 1to1, 2D, and I don't care all that much about it i terms of my connection with the idea so I can do it...The only reason a working demo isn't up right yet is because I'm planning on building something else which takes precedence and there is a bit of info i want to pick up before i start on it... and before that i am watching a subtitled series which prevents me from working on anything and watching it so it's been post poned for a short while, a dew days at worst.


I actually did try RPG maker a long time ago and found it too limiting cuz I always wanted to do things other than what was programmed to be allowable.

I think that the AI won't be difficult to write for this, but I may be wrong... But there are a few options for it that I am considering... I don't like the idea of full control, but i can see where it would have its benefits and since i am in to maximum customization i likely will put it in there as it will likely be the default anyways when i write it and then after i get the characters working i'll then add in the AI.

I'm not sure what your background is. If it's C++, I highly recommend starting with Silverlight and the Microsoft package and C#. There is also a C-derrived language that Apple produces, but I know nothing about it. If you are newer to programming, Flash (which uses a language called "ActionScript", currently on version 3) is an option. A lot of people are excited about HTML 5 but I know nothing about that.

To answer your questions, "vector" is basically a complex sounding word for a shape that is rendered from a math formula. The term is mainly important because of what it is not: it's not pre-defined pixel-by-pixel data (those are called "rasters.") Vectors can grow or shrink or flip around or translate relatively smoothly. Rasters are made up pre-defined pixels, so they are often less flexible. Think about what happens when you zoom in on or "sheer" an electronic photograph: it pixilates.

In terms of City of Heroes, the character model is basically a type of (3D) vector, with a raster image mapped onto it (the face, skin, costume pattern, etc). The powers in Ice Control, such as Block of Ice, may be an example of a pure 3D vector; they even scale with the size of the enemy.

In simple games, 2D vectors are often used because they frequently (but not always) require less memory than equally-sized rasters do. This is why they are so popular for use in Flash, Silverlight and other online games. A vector that is just a huge red circle is just a formula for a circle that is red. A raster that is just a huge red circle is pixel data for every single pixel in the file. Silverlight, and newer versions of Flash allow you to see this rather directly by actually providing the code (as XML) used to build the vector image in your detailed design window. (No such information is provided for rasters, but using code you can interpret and manipulate that too.)

Another thing to keep in mind though is that images sometimes begin life as vectors but are converted to rasters (often via Adobe Photoshop or the equivalent) for use in the game ahead of time. The power icons used in this game are probably an example of that. It really depends on what the game is trying to achieve. An advantage of rasters in general is that they often have standard recognized formats (jpg, png, gif, etc) where vector doesn't seem to have as much standardized support.

BTW if this is your first game ever, I highly recommend trying something in 2D first. 3D is not necessarily harder, but to my knowledge there is no game that is entirely 3D. You will eventually need to understand 2D concepts for things like user interfaces or sub-games. And learning the concepts and design structures of the game design is a lot more important, IMO, than learning the technical hurdles of mastering 3D, especially since that has been changing so much over the past 10 years, and will probably continue to.

ahhh so vectors are used for the nifty zoom fuctions and wire from animations and such in 3D models... Yeah... Until I get a more concrete model i should probably stay way from them as I hate 3D modelling...

i dunno if I mentioned it... I'm using Python. I'm told that it is become the standard now adays and from my experience it has great tutorials and I know how to do everything I need in it. I'm not new to programming, but I haven't done much of it in a while and I could never find anywhere that ever got beyond text stuff... I know...or use to know... COBOL, RPG AS/400, QBASIC, C, C++, Python, and other languages I no longer remember...or might not be considered languges like JS, PHP, and various Mark up languages.Eventully I might learn HTML5, Java is similar to all the other languages i know and I have the IDE set up for it, but Python is better imo at the moment. C# never interested me and ActionScript i tried to learn but it didn't have enough applicable uses and the price to buy flash development stuff was too much for too little.


his is not my first game technically... I've done simple games and basic text based RPG combat system engines before so yeah I know roughly the amount of work I'm looking at.