i doubt those other fans would (only) buy your game "because it is a table-top game made into a computergame"

Not tabletops. 2d, turn-based RPGs. Like Fallout, the example I used, which was NEVER a tabletop game. (Seriously, how could you get that screwed up?)

If there was a dying genre I liked, and I saw a game in that genre that looked good once inspected, damn right I'd buy it for that alone. If you want to play a specific kind of game nobody makes anymore, then you'll play any you find that are any good at all. And what makes you think that's the only reason? There's plenty of new features here, and the soundtrack can't hurt.

This is a genre that pretty much doesn't exist anymore, but used to be much bigger. There should be plenty of fans of the genre who can't find any others. All I don't know is how many there are, how many of them can find my game and how many other people would buy it. (I'm also not sure about pricing, but that's beside the point.)

$10 says all these down-votes are from the same squeaky wheel. (Why does this feature exist? This shallow nonsense is all it will EVER be used for.) If you're reading this: You aren't hurting me, and I know who is doing all the voting here. Quit shaming yourself.

I'm going to make a more in-depth post on the RPG today. Typing it right now.

Taking advice, I devised symbols for each class. Following are the twenty classes and their symbols. The sex of the people in each symbol is the sex of the individual bearing the symbol. The people are nude, but as this is a silhouette nothing is shown. These are all metaphors. Go ahead and try to interpret them yourself. Some should be easy, others should be difficult. It might be interesting to try and interpret it, but I must warn you that some of this imagery is DARK.

Soldier: A dead child being eaten by a dog, lying inside a black, heart-shaped box held by an iron hand.

Warrior: A child bearing a sword, facing a threshold with a large horned shadow coming through it.

Martial artist: A child, hand up, with a velvet-gloved, iron hand guiding their wrist.

Guardian Sentinel: A child clutching a heart-shaped box to their chest. Several adults are visible through the box's lid.

EDIT: I retconned this to avoid confusion between the guardian class and guardian deities.

Lawman/Lawwoman: A dead child being beaten with an iron fist.

Scout: A child, in a tree, with a looking glass.

Bard: A child with a lute, writing with a quill upon parchment.

Ranger: A child, arm outstretched and a bird landing upon it.

Rogue: A child hiding behind a counter holding a knife and a loaf of bread, before a threshold with a large horned shadow standing in it.

Mystic: A blind child holding a hand of cards: The World, The Fool, The Tower, The Lovers and The Devil.

Savant: A child sitting on a chair, reading a book by candlelight.

Artisan: A child sitting at a desk, sketching.

Noble: A child wearing a black coat, with a red right hand clutching green paper to their abdomen, fingers in their coat.

Worker: A child, holding a pickaxe, being struck with a whip.

Shaman: A child sitting against a tree watching a dog, while the dog watches an owl and the owl watches the child.

Priest/Priestess: A pile of burning books and an iron fist beating a dead child with a rod.

Physician: A headless child kneeling next to a beheaded adult, trying to put the adult's head back on.

Wizard/Witch: A child wearing goggles, holding a vial and a quill.

Sorcerer/Sorceress: A child, arms outstretched like wings, flying through the sky.

Mage: A child with a looking glass, sitting on the crescent moon.

If nobody can figure this out in three days, I'll explain the lot of them. Don't be afraid to spitball.

$10 says all these down-votes are from the same squeaky wheel. (Why does this feature exist? This shallow nonsense is all it will EVER be used for.) If you're reading this: You aren't hurting me, and I know who is doing all the voting here. Quit shaming yourself.

Based on the fact that you thought your down-votes came from a single source, no, you probably don't know who is doing "all the voting"; you only have 4 down-votes in this topic, all from separate users, none of whom appear to have any unusual pattern of regularly voting you down and two of whom have never previously voted you down at all. Please don't drag your own discussion off-topic with petty complaints -- if you don't like the reputation system then just ignore it, but we've actually found it to be very effective both in discouraging some of the more anti-social behaviours that used to be more regular here and in highlighting some of the best quality content. It's also helped to improve signal-noise ratio but decreasing the amount of "I agree" posts without additional content, but still allows people to show they agree.

If you have suggestions for improving the system or just want to vent your thoughts/frustrations we're happy to hear them in the correct place (the CS&I forum), but here you're just dragging your own topic off course. If you think the system is being abused we're also happy to investigate any reports you make -- although I'll note again that this does not appear to be the case in this instance. Please keep any further replies to this topic on-point.

$10 says all these down-votes are from the same squeaky wheel. (Why does this feature exist? This shallow nonsense is all it will EVER be used for.) If you're reading this: You aren't hurting me, and I know who is doing all the voting here. Quit shaming yourself.

Based on the fact that you thought your down-votes came from a single source, no, you probably don't know who is doing "all the voting"; you only have 4 down-votes in this topic, all from separate users, none of whom appear to have any unusual pattern of regularly voting you down and two of whom have never previously voted you down at all. Please don't drag your own discussion off-topic with petty complaints -- if you don't like the reputation system then just ignore it, but we've actually found it to be very effective both in discouraging some of the more anti-social behaviours that used to be more regular here and in highlighting some of the best quality content. It's also helped to improve signal-noise ratio but decreasing the amount of "I agree" posts without additional content, but still allows people to show they agree.

If you have suggestions for improving the system or just want to vent your thoughts/frustrations we're happy to hear them in the correct place (the CS&I forum), but here you're just dragging your own topic off course. If you think the system is being abused we're also happy to investigate any reports you make -- although I'll note again that this does not appear to be the case in this instance. Please keep any further replies to this topic on-point.

I had already gone back to the topic at hand, but thank you for your unsolicited advice. I'm going to go back to adding information to the topic now, thanks.

Well it definitely sounds like a huge project. I don't think javascript would be best for something like this, but if your buddy thinks he can do it then more power to him! All the customization sounds like it could be really fun, and having to watch each aspect of your character is definitely something out of the ordinary

There mere fact it's turn-based already makes performance a non-issue. As long as the code is kept tidy using javascript shouldn't be an issue, really, especially if the programmer is accustomed with it.

A bigger issue would be getting all the assets done (not just graphics and sound, but also the layouts as well as the script and such). RPGs are not easy to make for this very reason. It's going to be rather time consuming.

May want to consider having some way for players to provide their own stuff (e.g. custom maps for battles), at least that'll help grabbing their attention for some more time :P (if you do this you may want to consider making the editor you used available to them)

Well it definitely sounds like a huge project. I don't think javascript would be best for something like this, but if your buddy thinks he can do it then more power to him! All the customization sounds like it could be really fun, and having to watch each aspect of your character is definitely something out of the ordinary

There mere fact it's turn-based already makes performance a non-issue. As long as the code is kept tidy using javascript shouldn't be an issue, really, especially if the programmer is accustomed with it.

I wouldn't call it a "non-issue." It's still grating to watch an animation lag, skip or slow down in a turn-based game. Still, not a big issue and it shouldn't come up offline. (You can't avoid it online, there are a lot of truly awful connections out there, although we can reduce it somewhat.)

A bigger issue would be getting all the assets done (not just graphics and sound, but also the layouts as well as the script and such). RPGs are not easy to make for this very reason. It's going to be rather time consuming.

Yes, I know. Thankfully, a lot of the art is simple and many enemy, armour and weapon types are palette swaps of one another. For instance, a suit of bronze heavy armour and a suit of steel heavy armour can use the same sprite with the colour changed. The effort that took? Open the image editor, go through a menu, move a slider. Voilà. There will (unfortunately) have to be a lot of that.

May want to consider having some way for players to provide their own stuff (e.g. custom maps for battles), at least that'll help grabbing their attention for some more time (if you do this you may want to consider making the editor you used available to them)

Yes, there's supposed to be a modding kit, complete with a map maker. (You know, I could have sworn I already mentioned that.) To be totally honest, I'm looking forward to seeing what they can do with it more than I am the income the game will bring.

This is a genre that pretty much doesn't exist anymore, but used to be much bigger.

an important question:

why?

what happened?

game types that lose popularity usually do so because either:

1. the game type evolves into another more popular game type (2d platform shooters evolved into FPS games)

2. the demographic changed. flight sims are less popular than at first, because at first, only hard core geeks owned PCs, so all titles were designed by and for hard code gaming geeks (like me). then PCs became more common, enter the "casual gamer", "mass market AAA titles", consoles, Nintendo jump and shoots, Angry Birds, and all that stuff. the market grew, but also changed as to the demographics makeup, and what types of games would sell the most. its the same old story of broadening appeal means reducing to the lowest common denominator (usually sex and violence). "mass market crap for the mindless masses" as they say.

if it turns out that something like "Skyrim" vs "Fallout" is considered "the way" to do an RPG these days, then you may have a problem.

and now a word of advise from a table top gamer:

i started on classic D&D ruleset in 1977, 4 years before the invention of the PC. I ran a campaign on and off for about 5-6 years. the first game i ever wrote for the PC was a text based RPG written in 1982 on a Sperry Rand PC (8088 chip) with dual 360K floppy drives,and an EGA card (a nice PC for the time). the OS was MS-DOS 2.01 or 2.11.

if i'm turning to the PC for a good RPG experience, things like 3d, and real time are definite pluses. all other things being equal, i'd choose 3d and realtime every time.

only if i was looking to control a large party rather than concentrate on the members of a small one would i consider 2d turn based, as there would be command and control issues for a large party in realtime.

you may find the the minimum standard for the game type you want to make has been raised. it may have been 2d turn based and evolved into 3d realtime.

This is a genre that pretty much doesn't exist anymore, but used to be much bigger.

an important question:

why?

what happened?

game types that lose popularity usually do so because either:

1. the game type evolves into another more popular game type (2d platform shooters evolved into FPS games)

2. the demographic changed. flight sims are less popular than at first, because at first, only hard core geeks owned PCs, so all titles were designed by and for hard code gaming geeks (like me). then PCs became more common, enter the "casual gamer", "mass market AAA titles", consoles, Nintendo jump and shoots, Angry Birds, and all that stuff. the market grew, but also changed as to the demographics makeup, and what types of games would sell the most. its the same old story of broadening appeal means reducing to the lowest common denominator (usually sex and violence). "mass market crap for the mindless masses" as they say.

if it turns out that something like "Skyrim" vs "Fallout" is considered "the way" to do an RPG these days, then you may have a problem.

This genre was killed by our industry's decay. Most gamers are "casual" gamers who only want mindless killing frenzies like Call of Duty, and even with RPGs, "casual" gamers want simplistic rulesets they don't have to think about and are more concerned with aesthetics than gameplay. The industry as a whole is mostly concerned with pumping out smut that serves no purpose but to pump out as much violence for as little thought as possible, and even the makers of RPGs (which, you must remember, are a very small minority) are giving in to it by building games more and more for consoles while giving PC less and less support, and making their games simpler with each iteration at the expense of customization. Hence watered-down RPGs like Skyrim, which reek of consolitis, dominating the market. Even visually, this decay is evident. Games get higher and higher resolution, but they always end up looking worse as a result as next-gen graphics are dark, lack in colour and are completely bereft of any of the visual distinctiveness that the previous generations used to have. The music in games is getting less and less distinctive and memorable, and we end up with things like the soundtrack of Final Fantasy XII, where not a single song in the entire game could be recalled even one minute after they stopped playing. Everything in games is getting mushed together and everything that could make a game unique is being cut out, even though the few unique games that come out usually do fairly well, as game companies are being run by executives that don't know what a game is or how it is supposed to work, and are making idiot decisions based on market trends rather than any actual understanding of their consumers.

No marketing executive is going to recommend making a game in 2d, because 3d sells better. No marketing executive is going to recommend turn-based games, because real time sells better. No marketing executive is going to recommend quality, spirit, soul or originality, because cheap, uninspired, soulless knockoffs sell better. Our industry has too many marketing executives, and those marketing executives have too much power. And I realise I could put all that in a memo and entitle it "Shit, we already know."

I hate the way the market is going. I will have nothing to do with it. I want to make GOOD games for REAL gamers. Hardcore games that are unique, interesting and in now way cater to the brainless morons we call "the casual demographic." I have no interest in making a watered down RPG like Skyrim, I especially do not intend to make a mindless, repetitive twitch-fest like Call of Duty, and I don't give a flying fuck WHAT the market says. Even if I had the resources for a 3d, realtime, shooter-style RPG, I'd take the time to make sure it was unique and I would base all decisions on the game's quality, not profitability. That is who I am, and damned if I will ever let anything change that.

and now a word of advise from a table top gamer:

i started on classic D&D ruleset in 1977, 4 years before the invention of the PC. I ran a campaign on and off for about 5-6 years. the first game i ever wrote for the PC was a text based RPG written in 1982 on a Sperry Rand PC (8088 chip) with dual 360K floppy drives,and an EGA card (a nice PC for the time). the OS was MS-DOS 2.01 or 2.11.

if i'm turning to the PC for a good RPG experience, things like 3d, and real time are definite pluses. all other things being equal, i'd choose 3d and realtime every time.

I simply do not have the resources for a 3d, real time game. I'm making the best of what I've got as it is. I know what I would do with sufficient resources, and it's entirely different. (Still nothing like that mass-market AAA horseshit.) Here, have a link, I've already gone into it.

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/643191-near-future-game-concept-working-title-wounded-gaia-feedback-welcome/?p=5071168

only if i was looking to control a large party rather than concentrate on the members of a small one would i consider 2d turn based, as there would be command and control issues for a large party in realtime.

you may find the the minimum standard for the game type you want to make has been raised. it may have been 2d turn based and evolved into 3d realtime.

This game *does* allow for a large party. The party can go all the way up to 32, even if only 16 are controlled by the player directly. That is WAY too many for real-time, but still a manageable number for turn-based gameplay. And I will reiterate my main point one more time: I am out to make a good game before anything else, profit isn't even my secondary concern. As long as the game makes more money than we spent on it, it's enough to make another. I would *like* to make more money, but I am putting the game first. I just want to make games, and I want to make them my way. Money is the means, NOT the end.

EDIT:

If I seem angry, that's because I am.