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What is Project Template?



Project Template developer here. Template is an over-scoped indie video game currently being developed by just me in my free time. I currently work full time making video games as a programmer, and now I have even less of a life by working on this. But anyway, the game... The game is a single-player procedural action RPG dungeon-crawler. The idea of the game is to bring together all of my ideal gameplay modes from my favorite titles into one game.



The games that inspire Template are the following:



Final Fantasy IX - Aesthetic/Theme/Sound Design/Vertical Progression



Final Fantasy XI - Aesthetic/Theme/Sound Design/Parallel Progression



Diablo 3 - Loot/Gear Progression/Skills/Some Aesthetic



Borderlands - Loot/Humor



Ni No Kuni - Theme/Party Based Combat



Dragon Quest VIII - Theme/Progression/Material/Collectible Combination (Alchemy Pot)



Pokemon - Collection/Parallel Progression



Digimon World - Collection



Dynasty Warriors - Combat



Zelda: The Wind Waker - Combat/Aesthetic





The above describes which aspects of each game contribute to the overall vision of Template. The main aspects of Template are as follows:



Platform



Currently the game is planned for a Steam release only. Although, it will have controller support and I will strongly push for users to play with one if they want the intended experience.



Progress



At the time of this post, the game is in very early prototyping stages. Many of the features described here have been proven out to some degree, but there is always more work to be done. Here is a screenshot of some prototype work (note: not representational of final game - Updated):







Theme



The overall theme is renaissance fantasy with Celtic undertones, very much in the style of the games mentioned above. Music will be made in the style of Nobuo Uematsu's work on FF IX/XI. I had considered mixing in some Dynasty Warriors heavy metal in combat sequences, but we'll see. Characters have single noise sounds with text speech similar to Zelda, and will have textual accents in the style of DQ VIII and Ni No Kuni.



World



The world is planned to be completely procedurally generated, and thus infinite. However, it will not be generated like Minecraft. It will be separated into zones, with short loading sequences between them. The zones will, however, have distinct biomes and themes, similar to Minecraft. These zones will be randomly generated. Their generated data will be saved for your user and will always be available to return to. In addition, each zone will have a number of towns and dungeons to enter.



Player Goals



The overall goal of the player is to expel darkness from each new zone he/she enters by following a certain string of quests. Once the zone has been cleared, paths to new zones open up and the player gets feedback for his/her deeds. There will be secondary rewards for players who clear a certain number of zones and extra bosses to give some middle level goals to the player. Since the world is infinite, there may not be a way to reach the highest goal, or the player should be given real reason for why there is still darkness in the world.



Dungeons



Dungeons will be created similar to Diablo 3, where the goal is to reach the end and get rewards. They will be more akin to rifts, where there is definitely a boss at the end, and the player will always be rewarded in some way for completing it. Unlike Diablo, there will also be loot chests similar to Borderlands with items.



Collection



Here is where ideas from Pokemon and Ni No Kuni come in. The idea is that you will be able to sway enemies you fight to your side and that you will be able to bring three with you to level up, creating an overall party of 4 (you and three mobs that you've "caught"). In addition, enemies will come as certain levels and rarity, so it is possible to collect rarer and more powerful versions of these mobs. This is one of the higher-scoped aspects of the game and many iterations to the design of this will be necessary, but it's still a goal and part of the vision. I haven't considered any kind of evolution of creatures, mostly from a work-mitigation standpoint, but I haven't ruled them out. I don't believe I will actually have them out in the world fighting as that may be beyond my ability to match the intended experience as a single developer. I'm thinking they will offer some kind of buff or elemental advantage and will be hovering behind the player.



Player Class



The player class will be defined by the gear that the player chooses. Instead of class-specific abilities, there will be weapon-specific abilities. A swordsman with mage robes on? Go for it! It'll boost any magic sword abilities you might have. The idea is that this will give the player more freedom to define their own style.



Combat



Combat is a direct action RPG. Because this is a fast-paced game, it is ideal that every action has an immediate reaction. At its core, the combat will be in the style of Dynasty Warriors, where the player will have a set number of combos used to hit a wide range of enemies. The goal is to have the screen filled with about as many enemies as you would expect from DW or D3. The mobs in the player's party will be able to use special abilities based on player input or under certain situations (ex: heal when low health). Horizontal gameplay progression will come in a procedural ability system, that composes key, non-conflicting features of a single ability to make unique new abilities. These abilities can be learned (they are collectable) for specific types of weapons.



Here is a screenshot of some prototype combat (note: not representational of final game):







Towns



Towns serve the purpose of save points, shops, and sources of quests. They are generally one-zone areas used for switching out party members and getting potions if needed. Although towns are procedural, they will be given an "official" entrance sequence and a UI name popping up. I want the game to make the player feel that this town is a hub for this zone for the people he/she is trying to save, and not just a place to do his/her own thing. So cinematically, all towns will be given a bit of a show.



Quests



Quests will be separated into procedural and hand-crafted. There will be an overall goal for the player to pursue (expel darkness), and it will be the job of this system to make the player feel like he is making real progress towards that goal, as well as give out due rewards.



Loot



Loot is dropped in a similar style to Diablo, where gear and weapons drop in the world with varying rarities. These drops are also completely procedural, and the names of the items will often reflect which creature was slain to get it. One system that is unique to template is its loot pacing system. It run on an RNG/time-based system. Unlike other games, however, it will looks at currently equipped gear to help inform decisions on what gear to drop. If the system knows that your gear would obviously outclass some of the gear it would normally choose, it will give higher weight to gear or weapons that are better, depending on how long it has been since you have gotten something better. This will lessen the frustration of getting hundreds of useless items. Useless items are able to be traded up for better gear, however. There will be a system similar to the alchemy pot from DQVIII where you put in a number of useless items and have to go play a bit before its ready.



Fishing



Because I can't make an RPG without some kind of fishing, even if it is just standing next to a stream waiting to press a button when the game tells you too. I'll make it a bit more intricate than that, though.



Work Mitigations



Since this is such a high-scope project, some key work mitigation decisions have been made. For example, making the world and gameplay procedural will heavily reduce art content creation burdens as a lot of it can be recycled. Since I do not by any right claim to be an artist, I am relying heavily on free content I can scrounge together and warping them to my vision of the project.



Scope



By now, you're thinking to yourself that this game might not even be possible, let alone by one person. And you would probably be right. But I'm going to work at it anyway, because I really want it to exist. I don't expect it to be at even a reasonable state in the near future, but my hope is that it will get to a point where crowd-funding is viable. Maybe in 15 years... Hah, you think I'm kidding....



Future Content



Although much of the game is procedural, the idea is that hand-crafted zones with custom content can and will get pushed to the game over time. If the game has non-procedural zones to choose from, it has a chance to pick from them, helping to make the world grow.





Support



If you would like to support this project and have some content creation skills that might lend itself to this type of game, feel free to send me a message with a link to a portfolio or with some work. I need all the help I can get on this so I will be actively looking for people to help. I will also be active with the community to help iron out design details.

