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Four Brothers - Generative Exercise - The Sandbox

One of the elements of a sandbox game, such as Minecraft, that might find its way into RPGMaker VX Ace is a random start area, random event placement, etc.

The community is tingling with resources to achieve this.
 
Random event locations often add additional replay value, as you are going to have to find a new path through the game on each additional playthrough.

How does that compare to random item drops?

In a game such as Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords, I was not so much a fan of pure item randomization, as it often led to balance issues throughout the game (or hours of crummy drops.)

It also led to a lack of immersion, where players would save the game, get the drop, and reset if it was a less than desirable drop.

In an Alpha game, such as Damned, you might find required items completely unobtainable (a combination required to open a locked safe spawns inside the safe it is intended to open.)

How does this translate to Four Brothers?
I think we keep we strive for a healthy mix and randomize certain elements:
Starting character.
Starting dungeon location.
We set specific regions where the quest specific items can drop, and maybe design a story-relevant "out" should we be in an impossible scenario (like those safes we couldn't open in Damned.)

Next week I am going to be looking at team composition elements in games.

Minecraft Snapshot 1.8

Minecraft has been written about and discussed enough by the gaming community; I don't think that can be argued against.

I only recently, just past the holidays, began playing. I had a knowledge of the game since its launch, and had read about it in many blogs. I had played the 2D clone, Terraria, and I already have an abundant connection of sandbox games.

What intrigued me about Minecraft, is that the theme "How long can you play in a sandbox?" is inherently without narrative. A good friend helped me to introduce narrative by jumping into hardcore mode, where I tragic deaths could be retold as stories.

After a few weeks of managing a Minecraft Server, and about fifty world folders deleted later, we set up a recent snapshot, which introduced a variety of new ores (different colored legos) to play with.

Minecraft is an elegant time-waster. There is nothing wrong with being a time-waster, I have over 450 hours logged in Dota 2. The elegance is in the adaptability of the game to the players play-style.

I watched my friend, an armchair architect craft a massive tower of sandstone and glass... my sibling speed-run to bedrock and hunt for diamonds...or the time my wife and I crafted an elaborate wheat field farming system.

The advent of new ores is akin to mixing different colored sands together, it allows you the freedom to shape your world in your image.

The mechanism most attractive to me is the exploratory aspect; it is why we constantly roll new worlds.

We love the thrill of finding something new.

Four Brothers - Repurposing the Elements of a MOBA.

We've been snowed in this week, while fighting disease, and I haven't come up with much while I've been battling illness. With that said, I have been enjoying enjoying a few games sporadically, and have thoughts on incorporating mechanisms from a MOBA, such as Awesomenauts, into the game I am tinkering with, Four Brothers.

One element of MOBA-style games is the laning aspect, choosing an area of the map in which you will gain experience. The laning phase of these games changes the early game progress of your chosen character.


Suppose in our RPG the path the player chooses modifies the outcome of player development, perhaps one lane is safer than the others, one is high risk with high rewards, and the third is completely random encounters?

We start with a map "off-the-shelf", just a sample map that can easily be divided into three sections.

Next, using the region editor we create three distinct areas.

 

We are going to carefully place encounters in the two side regions, then trigger the center to be entirely random.

Basically, we want to weigh risk vs. reward. The idea is the path choice will either advance or slow character development.

Being under the weather, I can't elaborate much more, but you get the gist.

Awesomenauts

In April 2013 I made a switch from RTS (real-time strategy) to MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena). I had followed competitive RTS (primarily Starcraft: Broodwar) since early-2004 when I had purchased the game (for the third time) while working graveyard shifts at a big box store.

The Broodwar Community and the MOBA communities (primarily DOTA) are deeply intertwined, as Aeon of Strife, a custom-user map for Broodwar is basically the map on which all-moba are based.

Fast-forward to Christmas 2013, I had competed in over 200 DOTA 2 matches (Dota is a very hard game) and the Steam Sale is in full-swing.

Robin Edgar, son of Bob Edgar (who is responsible for most of my media musings), had generously bestowed me with a Steam gift, with a note which said, paraphrasing:
Grant,

DOTA scares the hell out of me, but I think you might like this.
It's more or less a Saturday morning MOBA!

- Robin

Enter Awesomenauts.
Awesomenauts works as a sort of 2D Battle Arena (MOBAs like SMITE are 3rd-person 3D... games like DOTA 2 and LoL rely on RTS-style over the shoulder view.)

The characters are cartoonish, comical, and I think I've heard every single person describe every single character at some point as "over-powered."

Awesomenauts is the beer and pretzels MOBA.
Although it works hard to "rank" it's players (in a week I was in the the fourth of ten leagues, roughly mid-ranked) it feels like if you are taking it seriously then you might be missing some of the fun.

I found the game most enjoyable when I was playing it with friends and family on Skype, with a console-controller, and sporadically at best.

When I don't feel like putting my heart on the line in a DOTA match, and I feel like avoiding name calling with friends, I play Awesomenauts, where it takes me back to bartering with my brothers over which action figures get to be "my men" and while they sort out who their heroes will be, as we weave the story of epic deeds.

Generative Exercise: Repurposing Elements

This week I am following up on “Gone Home” with a generative exercise.

 I’ve been playing with ideas on how I can use found and triggered narrative elements that reveal aspects of character into a new game of my own design.

The idea I came up with is an exploratory dungeon-delving game, set in ancient Japan, borrowing feudal elements. 

(Final Fantasy Style Banner Made in Photoshop... 121 seconds. :P)

“Four Brothers” follows the tale of four samurai sentenced to exile beyond the gates of Hell. The preliminary level involves searching out jisei, Japanese death poems written by monks and haiku poets on the verge of death. As we correctly identify the jisei, and matching them together, we will reveal a party member.  Once the party of “Four Brothers” is assembled we will journey deeper into the void, with each level revealing more about our past and our reason for exile.

Currently I am working in RPG Maker and hope to have some demonstrative elements up on Thursday.

 Right now I am troubleshooting why my in-game text is so dark (I recently installed some tile sets, so that may effect it) and I am working on my "Lantern effect", which changes the size of the circle of light around the character. 

Here's the eventing I'm using for lantern:
Added Lantern to Item Database. Lantern items are consumable and trigger the event "Lantern On"
Lantern On is a Common Event that issues the following commands:

Control Timer:  Startup (0 min. 10 sec.) // Starts a ten second timer
Control Switches: [0004 : Lantern] = On // Triggers a switch
Show Picture: 2, 'maca2k',  (273, 200), (100%,100%) Center, 255, Normal // Brings up my vingette graphic
// which changes the illuminated area around the player

I then made a parallel process to control how the timer and lantern behave based on the amount of time left on the timer.

Conditional Branch:  Timer 0 min 9 sec, or less // Is there any time left? If there isn't do the following
Erase Picture: 2 //Delete the picture, there's no time left on the lantern
Control Timer: Stop // Stop the timer as there is no time left.
Else: // Do nothing
Branch End; //End This Branch)

Gone Home - Twitch.TV Stream Postponed

Due to a hardware failure (read: damaged headset) I am going to post-pone the livestream of Gone Home until I receive the parts to fix my 3.5mm jack.

Apologies for anyone who was tuning in tonight, we should be on point next week.