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Tactical Online RPG in development

Started by August 16, 2011 06:25 AM
5 comments, last by Konidias 13 years, 2 months ago
I'm currently working on a game and I'd love to get some feedback or ideas or whatever during the development process. If a turn-based tactical rpg is your thing, then I'd love to hear from you.

As to what the game is so far:

- online play with PvP and quest modes
- control a team of 5 characters (warrior/mage/archer/healer/trapper)
- the game is isometric 2D but has 3D/pseudo 2D artwork
- the game setting is lighthearted medieval fantasy
- it falls heavily into the category of games like final fantasy tactics (it's probably my biggest inspiration)
- the game isn't a clone or fangame, it's totally new and being built from the ground up

I'm hoping to get some people helping me test in the coming weeks/months... this would be for extremely early closed alpha tests and eventually closed beta testing.

But as for why I made this thread. Well, my vision for the game has changed quite a bit from when I started on it, and I'd like to refine it even more and possibly even get opinions or ideas that people might want to see in a game like this.

I'm really trying to get people who are interested in this type of game to have a discussion here. I've done a search on this forum and have noted there are quite a few people that seem interested in this or are working on their own similar project.

So if you are interested, or working on something similar, feel free to chime in and basically discuss anything related to this type of game. I'm looking for ideas, likes/dislikes, design discussion, etc... The more the better. It's all motivation to me. :)

I don't have a whole lot to show as I have been busy working on the game instead of recording videos or taking screenshots. The game is still in engine development so the graphics aren't really started yet. I have this screenshot of what the game will vaguely look like:

thronesdev_sm.png

and here is the warrior character turnaround... this is just the basic undetailed model with no textures at the moment:

charspin.gif

Comment, discuss, engage! :)
[size="3"]Thrones Online - Tactical Turnbased RPG
Visit my website to check out the latest updates on my online game
Why are you limited to just 5 units?
Do you have to have 1 of each type or can you mix/match?
You should offer a texture set that makes the knight look like an Onion Kid
What language did you use (and is it open source? I would like to know how you did the camera if it's openGL).

EDIT:
As a competitive game, how will make sure that teams are balance or can make a balanced game?
Will you point-buy your units? Or will the levels, equipment, and abilities increase a kind of "threat tally"?
Do you need a mapper or a game designer? :-)
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That looks neat. If there's one thing I'd urge you to do, is not to blatantly clone FFT or Battle Ogres but do something unique or different here; we already have so many medieval fantasy isometric turn-based stategy games :P

Also out of curiosity, what's your tech behind this? Is this pure 2D, or rendered in 3D (the little red/green/blue arrows make me think it might be full 3D)?
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looking good. why not create the engine tools so that you can create more than one game afterwards? It will take you a bit longer but then your next game will take less time, and keeping the core base for the engine the same.

Why are you limited to just 5 units?
Do you have to have 1 of each type or can you mix/match?
You should offer a texture set that makes the knight look like an Onion Kid
What language did you use (and is it open source? I would like to know how you did the camera if it's openGL).

EDIT:
As a competitive game, how will make sure that teams are balance or can make a balanced game?
Will you point-buy your units? Or will the levels, equipment, and abilities increase a kind of "threat tally"?
Do you need a mapper or a game designer? :-)

Right now you're limited to 5 units in a battle because the game is focused on using a small team of unique characters instead of a larger team of faceless characters. There is also the concern that having more units means that a single PvP battle could take a lot longer to finish. If you have 10 units each, all 10 units on one side would need to be defeated in order to win the match... which could be nice if you enjoy really long battles, but I'm trying to keep the battle sessions relatively short and fast paced in order to reach a larger audience of people. (the kind who want to spend maybe 20-30 minutes at a time playing a game instead of hours at a time)

Onion Kid? Heheh, there will be a lot of stuff available to customize your characters, so maybe it's possible. :P

I'm using Multimedia Fusion 2... which some people might frown upon but in my opinion it isn't the engine that matters, it is only the end result that matters. Right now I feel that the software is capable of making the game I want, and I have experience using it, so it was the obvious choice for me.

Camera is just 2D, there isn't any 3D involved aside from the sprites which are rendered to 2D images.

As far as balance is concerned... I'm going to work hard at making sure classes all balance out. This will probably take a lot of tweaking and testing but eventually the game should be balanced to the point where a player's skill is the main determining factor in the outcome of a match. I'm all for skill over luck/imbalanced mechanics.

For now, there will be point buying when a unit levels up.

It's possible that in the future I might release the level editor for anyone to design maps... It's pretty fun to use already, so that should be exciting if it happens. The community could then help add on to the game with their own fun level designs. Since the game is lobby based, you can choose which map to play on before the start of a pvp battle. I see no reason why users couldn't submit maps to be added to the list of maps to choose from. :)


That looks neat. If there's one thing I'd urge you to do, is not to blatantly clone FFT or Battle Ogres but do something unique or different here; we already have so many medieval fantasy isometric turn-based stategy games :P

Also out of curiosity, what's your tech behind this? Is this pure 2D, or rendered in 3D (the little red/green/blue arrows make me think it might be full 3D)?

It's definitely not going to be a clone. :) There will obviously be some inspiration taken from these games, as these are games I found really fun to play. But all the characters/graphics/monsters/skills/etc will be original. Some might vaguely resemble things but that is bound to happen. There's only so many attacks an archer can do... like... shooting arrows. :) Yeah I know there are a lot of medieval fantasy games out there, but it just so happens to be a genre that I really like... and I don't know of many medieval fantasy isometric turn-based games that are online... aside from maybe... Dofus? Though I don't think my game will be much like that. Considering Dofus is about controlling a single character.

The game is all 2D. The artwork will mostly be 3D graphics that are rendered to 2D images. Think Donkey Kong Country or Super Mario RPG for the SNES.


looking good. why not create the engine tools so that you can create more than one game afterwards? It will take you a bit longer but then your next game will take less time, and keeping the core base for the engine the same.

Not sure what you mean. The software I'm using allows for super fast prototyping of games. The engine itself doesn't take that much time to make. It's all the fine details and content/design which takes a while. My plan is to keep working on this game for years after release, so I'm not really concerned about using the engine for something else in the future. By that time, I would imagine I'd want to make a different engine or game anyway, so my old game engine wouldn't be of much use unless it was for the same type of game. :)

Thanks for the interest guys! Keep up the questions and feedback. I enjoy hearing from people about my game.
[size="3"]Thrones Online - Tactical Turnbased RPG
Visit my website to check out the latest updates on my online game

Onion Kid? Heheh, there will be a lot of stuff available to customize your characters, so maybe it's possible. :P



Onion Kid is what the Neo Demiforce fan translation called the Onion Knight in Final Fantasy III.
I think it's kind of a cool name actually. Those whacky Square folks.
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Video of the game engine and level editor wip.

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[size="3"]Thrones Online - Tactical Turnbased RPG
Visit my website to check out the latest updates on my online game

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