Hey there, first post in the Games Design forum so if I did this wrong please tell me and I'll edit it or whatever. A friend and I are currently developing our own game and sharing most of the tasks amongst ourselves, we both do programming (though he does comp sci and I'm just simply self-taught so I'd prefer him to do the bigger tasks heh) and I've begun programming a fair bit of it already to use as a base for the game, it's no where near completion but getting there slowly. I came up with the game idea and we both started to work on it to fix it up and I was curious what people thought and if they could help with any specific issues (as well as questions I come up with) that they see. I've got a fairly sizeable rough draft of the design doc but I've only started putting it online now so I can't link to it, I'll try to just keep the key ideas and such here, the idea is fairly simple so there's not too much to it. It's currently unnamed so I simply called it Dev Project. Alright I'll shut up now and get to the game concept, I do apologise if it's hard to read I'm trying to keep it neat but put as much information in as I can. Basic Game Concept The basic concept of Dev Project is a 2D side-scrolling RTS that mixes strategy with music and musical theory to a degree. The player (also known as the Overseer, can we get any cheesier?) creates buildings through the formation of musical chords and assists the units spawned from these structures in reaching their goal with indirect control via management, spells and various items acquired during gameplay. Chords In music, a chord is a combination of three or more notes that blend harmoniously when played together. In Dev Project however, although we follow the basic rule of three notes create a simple tertiary chord, the chord itself is transformed into a structure depending on what type of chord was played. Since there are several thousands of chords we've limited it to the triad chords save Suspended (and we'll probably add in Suspended chords later on if we can think of something for them); Major, Minor, Augmented and Diminished and only the basic chords from those types (so no mix key chords, simply C Major through to B Major, etc) giving us forty-eight structures with twelve in each chord-set. There are four different types of chord-sets available in Dev Project and each one focuses on a different attribute, creating units fitting of the attribute the chord-set is based on. Each chord-set has it's own purpose for example: Major is the defensive tree (based on the Armour attribute), Minor is offensive (Damage), Augmented is the Support(Health) tree and Diminished is the Caster/Degen(Magic) tree. We understand that not everyone learnt music or musical theory and that's not the main point of the game at all, so there will be a handful of in-game guidelines to aid the player in knowing what the chords are and what they do, including a Recipe Book in the menu which lists all the information about the buildings and units. Resources Resources play a large role in Dev Project, much like they do in most strategy games. Players have to collect Notes which are used to create the buildings in the game as well as Points which are used to unlock research tiers. Notes Musical notes are the core of the game. Without them you cannot create buildings and without the buildings no units will spawn. Notes are one of the standard resources in the game. Players will have to mine from various “Sound Sources” to be able to create buildings and win the battles they will face. There are twelve notes in total, represented by the musical symbols: A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, and G#. Notes are bundled together under four different attributes. Each attribute has three different notes in that group each one being a tier higher. C, C# and G# have the Armour attribute. D, D# and A have the Health Point attribute. E, F and A# have the Magic attribute. F#, G, and B have the Damage attribute. So C for example gives five armour and C# gives ten and so on. When formed into a chord the attributes are taken from the notes and applied to the building that is created. The units that are spawned from the building are also affected by the attributes, creating a bunch of unique and different units. Points Points are used to unlock tiers for musical notes, they are earned through various deeds including creating and razing enemy buildings, winning battles, etc. As the player earns more points more of the twelve notes are unlocked and therefore more buildings are able to be created. There are three tiers all up, you begin in the first tier with a total of six notes. Upgrading to the other tiers will give you three notes each. For example the player begins with six notes; D, F#, A, C, E, G and can only mine those notes from the Sound Source. Once they upgrade to the second tier and unlock C#, F and G# they are finally able to mine those notes and create the chords that needed any of those notes. I just realised how long this was already so I'll try to speed it up, for the most part units are autonomous. Buildings only spawn a single unit at a specific interval based off the strength of the unit. The unit is then dependent on the chord-set and the notes used in the chord. For example a C Major has a C, E and G - +5 Armour, +5 Magic, +10 damage. Those stats will effect how the unit works in it's specific tree. Since the Major tree is defensive, high armour from the notes supplied means a proper tank whereas higher health is more of a supportive defensive class, a mixture would create a more balanced unit and so on. The main control you have over units is issuing when they leave your base, so you set Unit X to only leave spawn once 10 unit X have been spawned. You also assist your units with spells and items. We're currently focusing on one lane but my friend had the idea of having two ore more lanes and simply cycling through them to bring one to main and the other/s to the background. The game'll primarily be played single player through a campaign mode - I've written up a horribly cheesy (on purpose) story about how the political factions of our time have all but dissipated and genres of music have risen up to take their place and now vie for global dominance. We're going to go with four factions, the main difference between them is spells, units and storyline. Buildings stay the same for the most part (aside from visually and colour wise of course) as they're mainly unit spawners. Each faction is based on a stereotype found in music, there is a punk faction for example that are based primarly in offensive combat as we all know punks are aggressive. So their units get extra damage but suffer from less health and armour as a penalty for that, their spells are primarily offensive based, etc. Alright uh, I'm just going to leave it at that because it's already fairly long. If there's any questions relating to parts of the idea I'm sure I can answer them. The main questions I want to ask at the moment relate to the player not having direct control over the units. We were thinking of adding in perhaps a hero unit that spawns under given circumstances or from a certain building that allows you to have full control over them to give the player more to do. Would this be a viable idea? Does the concept sound like it's lacking for things the player can do? As well as the standard you know, "WHAT DO YOU THINK OF MY IDEA PLEASE" questions. What are people's thoughts on the concept? We've also had a bit of difficulty trying to figure out a visual style that suits the idea of the game and honestly any help from an artist or anyone for that matter just to suggest an art style they think would suit the concept would be really appreciated. We initially wanted to go with a silhouette theme where everything was mainly black and white as well but we're both not so sure about this anymore. Oh, if needed for any reason. It's being programmed in C# using XNA, it's geared for Windows not consoles and we're not quite sure about the target aim at the moment. If there's any mistakes or problems with this please let me know, thanks.

I'm not quite sure I understand what you when by a Side Scrolling RTS, so I'm assuming its kind of similar to the old King Authur game (which I believe was on SNES). This was where you started one side, recurit units and had to get to the other side of the map going through various obstacles along the way.

The first thing I would be asking is why would I need to play the notes to create the structures when a simple click would surfice since i'm only going to be building a few of each (i'm assuming there isn't going to be hundreds of structures at the same time). I think it would be more enjoyable to make creating the structures just point and click and then use the chords for the spells, assisting your units etc. and then you can do combos etc. with added bonuses for timing the "playing".

The other question is how difficult is it going to be to get the right combination of resources for the particular structure you want to build? Its just that twelve resources seems like alot. Have you thought of maybe making it so you only collect base (may not be the right term) notes. eg. C lets you spend C and C#, d D and D#, etc., with E and A seperate or choose one and it lets you spend for both just to lessen the number of resources. Though it is probably something that will come out in balance testing.

Haha, I apologise. I got so caught up explaining some of the things we're doing that I forgot some of the basics.

The levels are have a base on either side with hopefully (programmer art, woo) nice scenery along on the way and a few things you can do at specific points, building palisade walls and gates for extra defense and stuff. So whoever destroys the other's base first wins pretty much. As well as a few campaign level specific objectives even if it's just, "build this by this time" sort of thing.
The layout will be similar to Beat 'Em Up games like Double Dragon though (where you were able to move up and down as well as side to side), a good example of a recent game that did it is Castle Crashers. Just gonna paste a picture for reference:

http://livefrommylaptop.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/castle-crashersa2.jpg


We were thinking of how to deal with chord playing, the way I initially thought of it was once you gather the resources they got into an inventory. There's a button at the bottom right of the screen that you push and it opens up the inventory screen along with a Stave (it's more for aesthetic than anything else) so you simply drag and drop notes onto the stave and it places it onto the corresponding line. The stave would then ghost the other notes needed to complete the current chord possibilities like E and G for a C Major if the note you put in was a C or Eb and G for a C Minor, etc.

Afterwards I thought of perhaps binding each note to a keyboard key (like Q = C, 2 = C#, W = D, etc) and working with that but we thought it might be frustrating for the player. Though then again I guess that's something we should test out before completely discarding.

I understand what you mean by the base notes idea and I quite like it. I didn't think too much about resource gathering once all twelve notes are available to be honest. The way I had imagined it was that every so often you'd get a random collection of notes (of those available to you) from the sound source since you start off with six notes that worked out well but it might be too much once there is the full twelve.

Thanks a lot for the suggestions, really appreciate it.

I like the concept, but I think it needs to be fleshed out more. I don't get how you would implement it in an interesting way.

One idea that came to mind is that chords underlie songs, while a string of notes act as the melody. What if the entire control scheme for your strategy was based on creating a kind of "song" -- like, choosing a tempo/percussion affects how much and what type of resources you gather, and choosing your chords sets the mood in terms of a defensive or offensive strategy, then the notes of the melody represent units and when they should be created.

In something like starcraft you have known strategies that are all about build order and that sort of thing. In this game you could just show someone some sheet music and that's the strategy.



Basically you'd be creating a song that has to "work." So your choice of tempo affects what kind of resources you have coming in. Your choice of chords is basically a choice of which tech tree you want to climb -- maybe the more you "play" a chord, the higher up that branch you go, so choosing one chord to play on its own is the way to climb all the way to the top of that tree, versus having two chord or three chords, which would give you a wider range of units, but not as high up the tech tree. Then the notes you choose generate units based on which chords you have playing underneath, like a C note could create a flying attack unit or a flying defensive tower depending on the chord accompanying it.

However, if you try to play too many notes for the tempo, you'll screw up the song and it won't play.


I guess the way it would work is that you compose the music at the start of the game to set up what you'll be producing, then you micro the units that are produced to win. Maybe you actually have instruments, and the goal is to destroy the other player's instruments to stop his song?

It kinda sounds like Patapon, except with chords as the user interface instead of tapping out rhythms.

Anyway, you could map a one octave scale to the keyboard to make it more like playing a piano. That way if the player strikes the wrong chord, you can penalize him/her.