Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Designing the Stat System

Designing the stat system

One of the core things we're attempting with Lifelike is a fast, repeatable experience. With that in mind we need to limit ourselves on the number of visible stats to the player and they need to be rather simple in what they do.

So far the current stat system is as follows: (names are not permanent)

HP - Health Points, when these reach zero this character dies.
Attack - Increases damage from physical attacks
Defense -Reduces damage from enemy physical attacks.
Ambition- Increases damage dealt from user’s magic attacks and decreases damage taken from enemy magic attacks.
Perception - Increases chance to hit the enemy, less likely to be noticed by enemies, and farther vision in black outs.
Fortune - Increases chance to dodge and chance to critically hit the enemy.
Synergy - Gives adjacent allies increased damage and damage reduction
Movement Speed - The number of tiles a character can move

We've combined some stats (such as having only one "magic" stat rather than two) and tried to make each stat attractive for different reasons. We'll be closely paying attention to see if this system is too complex and we'll be revisiting this soon.

Paul


Sunday, January 19, 2014

Turn System Implemented, Tested Out Initial Art Assets

Took the next step today on the movement system, did some code cleanup and restructuring, the player can now select a character to move. Implemented a turn system, where the player can only move his characters when it's his turn.

Also added the art mentioned in the previous post.

Schlumbergera (the christmas cactus)

Greetings!


I started playing around with some ideas for plants today. While these aren't finished assets I thought it would be a good place to start conceptually to get some ideas down. I'm not set on the colors either, though I did think about dismal work lighting, and of course the colors can be played with. One thing with the colors I didn't do here yet is to have them intensify as the object becomes more corrupt. Even though these aren't finished, I'll upload them individually for the programmers to use while they're working! Also you can let me know the best way to upload pictures. Would it be easier to have say, these three images the same size, or all saved snuggly to the content of the picture? I saved these ones so the pot (which doesn't change) is on the same part of the image, tell me if that works!







More to come!




Julia

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Narrative Tools

One of the loftiest goals that we have for this game is to create a story that does more than just rest alongside the gameplay. As much as we all love roguelikes and tactical RPGs, their rigidity and the level of abstraction inherent in their mechanics usually forces the narrative into a secondary role.

So, we want to find a way to tie the narrative and the mechanics of our game together in a more meaningful way than we've seen done before in this type of game. 

Being completely overwhelmed by this, I decided to start small. I wrote out all the tools I could think of that our game could have to deliver narrative to the player.

Click "read more" to see the document!


Friday, January 17, 2014

Implementing Movement Mechanics and Sprite Animations.


Today, on the programming side, we started working on some basic movement mechanics, in an isometric grid based environment, as well as some sprite animation.



Monday, January 13, 2014

The Idea

One of the first things I like to do when coming up with a new game idea is write up a little outward-facing blurb about it; a sort of "back of the box" thing that explains the core ideas of the game with the expected audience of, well, everyone. I find that trying to write something as if it would be read by people that might become players helps me figure out what's really important about the game. This will almost certainly change quite a bit over time, but here's the very first draft!

CORPORATE ROGUELIKE.
The player chooses from a cast of interns working in the basement mailroom, each working themselves to death at a thankless job, desperately trying to get a foothold on the corporate ladder. One of them (the player) receives a mysterious message from the CEO requesting her presence in his office. Confused and anxious, but eager to make a name for herself in the company, the intern must make her way to the CEO’s office--on the 100th floor. And the elevator is broken. And security’s pretty tight, so each floor can only be accessed via the stairs by obtaining a key card from the previous floor. 
As the intern progresses through the disturbingly inconsistent floors, things start to get a little strange... I mean, she expected the bureaucrats, the annoying office gossips, the security guards, and the cut-throat corporate backstabbers, but... wait, did that guy have a sword? why are there creeping vines all over the cubicles on this floor? Did that guy have three eyes? On his chest? Well, I suppose diversity in the workplace is a good thing, right?  
Gotta do whatever it takes to get the dream job.

More to come!