Design Document: Working Game Title: The 8th Scroll 1. Setting: Early 1300 time era/SCIFI happenings 2. Platform: GBA 3. Concept: The land of THRACE was once ruled by the great family known as Smyth. These rulers were the only warriors to use the known weapons of the greatest being called the Unicorn. The Unicorn offered the Smyth’s the weapons of great power so they would rule their land with a fierce hand. With these weapons came a Scroll that detailed how the weapon could be used at its fullest to perform their best moves. Each weapon was given to a warrior of the Smyth’s, eight in all received a weapon. Lord Adomis, enemy to the Smyth’s, hero to a small few that followed him became jealous of the Unicorn’s gift. Jestor, the god of the underworld saw this as an opening to acquire an ally. Presenting himself to Adomis, Jestor gave him the sword of CERES; a sword equal in strength to all the weapons of the Unicorn. Adomis and his generals, Proteus, and Deimos staged an attack upon the Kingdom of Smyth. This was known as the WARS of NYX, the war lasted many years. The Smyth’s began to weaken under the strength of the sword of CERES. Adomis began his last push into the village of Baltes, the last village leading to the castle of Midas. King Titan was waiting at the front gates leading to the village of Baltes. This was the last battle ever fought on the land of THRACE. King Titan brought the greatest weapon given by Unicorn, the Unicorn HORN. The two leaders of their armies battled greatly, showing how skilled they were with the given weapons. In the end Titan would strike the fatal blow destroying the sword of CERES. Unarmed and defeated Adomis gave up his reign and lost the WARS of NYX. As his punishment Adomis was executed in front of his army, his body was encased in a statue and sent to the Shrine of warriors where he would be watched until the end of time. The Unicorn saw that no more battles would arise with the fall of Adomis and cast a spell upon those who were in the bloodline of the Smyth’s. One after another every heir to come to the throne died suspiciously at birth. The older heirs passed away because of old age. The Unicorn believed that not one of the heirs survived so he went into a state of hibernation on the mountains of Brigid. Twenty years have passed since the WARS of NYX; a heir to the throne was indeed born under the nose of the Unicorn. A boy name Ledger came of an affair King Titan had with a beggar from the forest of Enyo. Titan never knew of this child as he died before its birth. As a young man Ledger discovers an opening in a large oak tree one day that will send him to his destiny for good or evil…. Still needs some work. 4. Object of the game: Using half turn based rpg elements and half real time elements you will search for the remaining scrolls. As well use the eight weapons during certain situations( for example through a dungeon, or during a boss battle). You will also be asked to complete many side quests that will reveal more depth to the entire story. 5. Gameplay: Trun based combat with hack N slash real time combat. Example during certain real time combat when magic is cast it turns to a turn based system, letting just that person cast magic then it returns to real time fighting . You will be able to take on many different type of enemies ranging from human to animal to monster type demons. You will have certain different weapons that will be more effective against certain enemies then others. You will level up stats such as HP, MP, SM, and as well have a Critical bar increase so you will be able to deal big damage using the Scroll powers found during the game. This will only last for a short time during the battles. You will be able to collect different armor and shields to help your defense level. Along the way many side characters will assist you during certain tasks and side quest. Magic will have its defined elements and some rather cool elements as well. In all you will be able to use over 20 differents types of magic during the game, ranging from Ice, fire, wind, thunder, to solar flare, warp, blue star, hellsfury. The casting of magic will work as the lower spells will cost fro nothing to 5 points to cast while the higher spells could easily wipe out the entire MP meter. The Special Moves section will consist in you learning a certain fighting style that others will teach you. You can only acquire these by searching the viallages you pass through for ancient warriors of the past. These warriors will then give you a a minigame to accomplish in order to learn the move. The last move will not need searching for as it is critical in your success at the end of the game. You will have a set limit in using special moves. A bar above the meter will begin to refill during battle. It will refill faster the more hits and damage you cause to your enemy. The less hits the longer it will take to refill. Items will consist of your herbs, spices, fruits, roots, water etc. for healing and the sort. You will also be able to equip your armor with different gems that will help defend against the magic used by your enemies, as well increase your stats. Money in the game will be set with a gold and silver system. Healing items will be bought with silver while armor and shield upgrades will use gold for their purchases. 6. Interface: RPG style, you will have two menus to choose from while fighting. The quick menu can be accessed with a press of the button. You can customize the backup window but the first window will consist of an attack command(which will change when you are able to use your Scroll move. It will change to the name of the scroll move for a short period of time), a magic command, a special move command and item command. The backup menu can be placed with short cuts to item stashes and different types of magic. Copyright 2002, Gabriel Monatlvo Any comments, or constructive criticism would be much appreciated. How does this game sound to you? Honor doesn''''t mean a thing to thieves!

quote: Original post by Valopt
1. Setting: Early 1300 time era/SCIFI happenings

Call it ''fantasy'' rather than ''sci-fi''. Just because book stores like to lump the fantasy books in with sci-fi, doesn''t mean we have to Or add in a period such as ''medieval'' or ''dark ages'' if you want to be more accurate. But ''sci-fi'' is just too broad a definition to convey much information. I would save that for distant future settings (most near future settings could be considerer cyberpunk, for example).

quote: 3. Concept:

This isn''t so much of a concept as an introductory story. A concept would be more what you have under ''Object of the Game''.

quote:
5. Gameplay:
Trun based combat with hack N slash real time combat. Example during certain real time combat when magic is cast it turns to a turn based system, letting just that person cast magic then it returns to real time fighting .

This example didn''t really make much sense to me. Since this is just a high-level view of your gameplay, you''d want to elaborate on this point in much more detail later in the design doc.

quote: You will level up stats such as HP, MP, SM, and as well have a Critical bar increase so you will be able to deal big damage using the Scroll powers found during the game.

If you''re going to name stats, give the full names rather than abbreviations. You can''t assume that everyone who might read your doc has played all the same games as you. Some people might play lots of RPGs and never see one that uses a ''hit point''.

quote: Magic will have its defined elements and some rather cool elements as well.

"Rather cool" is not a design element I''d say stick to the facts.

quote: 6. Interface: RPG style

Ack! ''RPG style''?? Which RPG? Are we talking The Bard''s Tale? Dungeon Master? Ultima 7? Ultima 8? Final Fantasy? Daggerfall?

I know there are a lot of kids out there who''ve never played any RPG that wasn''t written by Square, but that doesn''t give you an excuse to write your design doc like that

quote: Any comments, or constructive criticism would be much appreciated. How does this game sound to you?

Mostly I''ve criticised your document rather than your game... this is because your game doesn''t sound incredibly original, and therefore its quality is going to come down to how well you implement it more than anything. And I can''t comment on that based on the design document. However - I can point out that there''s nowhere near enough information in that short snippet of a document to be able to produce a full game. It wouldn''t be uncommon for a single section of a full design doc to take up more space than your entire document above.

[ MSVC Fixes | STL | SDL | Game AI | Sockets | C++ Faq Lite | Boost | Asking Questions | Organising code files | My stuff ]

Here is to help with the design document portion:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19991217/ryan_01.htm
(u might have to create a free account and log in to gamasutra.com to view that)

After that, perhaps if you put this idea into the above format it woudl be far better for critiqueing...personally I think it sounded sorta interesting and was curious, are you a programmer, artist or both? and have you done any programming on the GBA using like devkit advance or something?

-Shane

Thanks for the critique, i am well underway on the second draft and when that is done i will love some more criticism.

I am a beginner, i know about programming, having programmed in the ill fated Pascal and some QBasic. Artist? Somewhat, i can not draw full fledge people but i can do concept art of weapons and other stuff. Well i believe it is art to me lol

Honor doesn''''t mean a thing to thieves!

quote: Original post by Valopt
...having programmed in the ill fated Pascal...

"The ill-fated Pascal"?

Offtopic, but have you ever heard of Object Pascal? Delphi? Kylix? Don''t be so quick to dismiss languages. After all, COBOL and FORTRAN are still around (and getting new versions too, eg COBOL.NET).

This is alot longer than i thought it would be. I am in the midst of writing and doing some really awful concept art. Hopefully i will be done by my first deadline, the 15th of October.