Charas Heroes (something to see here probably)

[SaiKar]

Okay, I had some great successes fixing some issues last night so I'm greenlighting this project.

Charas Heroes

Plot
(note: this plot isn't a political commentary on my opinion of the current state of Charas or anything. It's just a game)

Charas was once a mighty nation, but constant besiege from its neighbors caused it to slowly fall into ruin. The biggest blow came when the old capital fell to the barbarian hoards. The survivors fled to a relatively isolated area of the land and established a new town of Arcast, but it too has been in decline. Many of Arcast's former citizens have abandoned the colony, drifting their own ways, and lawlessness has expanded even to remote Arcast, covering the city in an aura of gloom and hopelessness. Everyone fears that the last attack that will destroy Charas for good is only days away.

You are the last remaining member of Charas with vision and strength. Do you have what it takes to save Charas from its enemies and rebuild this shattered empire to bring Charas back to glory?

Characters
People from Charas. Yep, I'm making as many of you shlubs into characters as I can. I'm leaving room for 50.

When you start a new game, you can choose to be any of the standard characters that are currently in the game, even if you normally would be unable to meet that character until late in the game. You start out alone, but by completing recruitment quests you can gain more and more Charas members. I'm still working on how I'm going to properly manage the large number of characters, but that's an issue for later in the game.

Certain characters are plot-related and cannot be chosen as a starting character. But, none of the active users. We're talking people like Alex and Sarah C. here.

I'll add characters to the game based on the following highly mathematical calculation: registration date + general level of activity + general level of awesomeness + how much I like you + how many pictures of Sai'Kar (or Holly!) you've drawn + (how much I want to make an RMXP sprite of your character x 10). That's mostly a joke. Don't fret it too much.

In many ways, the town of Arcast is like a character in the game. Much as how characters level up and get new equipment, playing the game and completing quests will add new buildings and NPCs to Arcast, which increases the player's options. You get to see Arcast develop from the brink of ruin into a thriving city.

Because it may be hard to play the game starting as certain characters (such as Sai, who is basically just a healer) I'm also adding a mercenary system. Mercenaries are generated at your party's average level and of jobs the player requests. You pay a flat fee, in advance, per quest. So your initial fee gets you their services until you complete a quest, and then you must pay it again for them to stick around until you complete the next one. It will be a bit pricey to use them but not totally unfair.

Quests
Charas heroes is a quest-driven game. This doesn't mean that you'll be shuttled from one point to another or anything, far from it actually - you could ignore all of the quests and just bum around doing nothing. But completing quests is the only way to advance the plot and get the really good stuff.

Quests in this game are divided into four categories:

Missions are sequential, plot driven quests that advance the storyline. Generally speaking, you're always on a mission at any given time since completing one starts another. Missions generally don't give rewards directly, but unlock new areas, quests, and possibilities in town. Many missions require you to complete quests, such as mission 2 there in the screenshow below. You don't have to always be knocking out missions as fast as you can, but it's a good idea to try to keep working toward the goals at your own pace in some form or another.

Recruitments are specialized quests that always get you a new Charas member. You pretty much always know who you're going to get at the end of the quest. Complete the quest and they join you permanently.

Constructions are also specialized quests that add a new building to Arcast or improve an existing one. Again, it's pretty obvious what you're trying to build by the quest description. Complete the quest and the building will start being built, being completed after a certain amount of time.

General Quests are for anything other than the above. These might give exp, money, items, equipment, access to new areas, or whatever.

Quests have prerequisites and sometimes you have to have completed a quest to progress further in another. For example, in order to complete the Sai'Kar Recruitment, you need to have build a church in Arcast, which is the reward for a Construction quest.

I'm... not all that good at designing fun quests, apparently. So this will be a learning experience for us all.

Time
Time was kind heavy-handed in Outpost. It took a full 30 days to complete buildings and it was painful to kill enough time to see them be built. You were also forced into resting in a tent to make days pass, and that was kind of a pain in the butt and kept breaking the feel of exploration. I liked the system conceptually since it added to the feel of building your own colony, but the implementation was ultimately very poor.

In Charas Heroes, time is more abstract. Basically, time is measured in quest completions. For example, building a bazaar in Arcast takes 1 quest to build. So complete any quest and the building will be complete.

In order to stop players from working themselves into a corner by not having enough easy quests to complete to make time progress, certain quests will be repeatable. I'm also thinking of having a certain number of battles count as a time progression. We'll see.

General Development Theory
I believe that a lot of games don't get completed because they get too big and topheavy to ever be finished. To this end, I'm developing Charas Heroes a bit at a time. A new quest here, a new character there. The idea is 1) for me to not add anything so big that it would take more than a day or two to add and 2) for me to keep the game "functional" (IE mostly playable) at any given times and have any new, unfinished systems be able to be commented out if I want to release a version. What this basically boils down to is that the game should be released fairly often. So even if I don't deliver on most (all?!) of my promises, at least there will be SOME CHARAS GAME SOMEWHERE that we'll have forevah. It'll be kinda sucky at the beginning as the default RMXP systems aren't so great, but over time as I add more content and mod more scripts, should shape up nicely.

There's a pretty big hurtle at the beginning while I add the capacity to do all this stuff so it'll take me a while to get the first release ready, but other than that, should be pretty often.

This type of design also makes it easy for other people (IE you guys) to make suggestions and even add things directly to the game. I'm more than open to someone drawing some graphics or offering me some music or even modding the game directly and sending it back to me. It's not a team game per se, but I'd value and love any help and feedback I can get.

[SaiKar]

Currently playable:


Midnight - thief

Mid's attack isn't as hot as some of the tougher fighters, so relies a lot on her poisoned dagger attack to take down tougher enemies. Since even some bosses can be poisoned and it does like 10% of their health every round, Mid's a pretty good character to bring to tougher fights.


Sai'Kar - healer

It's actually not as hard to play solo as Sai'Kar as I was fearing. She has a halfway respectable physical attack and her healing abilities can keep her health up without major issue. It's a slower way to fight, but relatively safe. Invest more in magic recovery items than health if you play as Sai and you'll go far.

[X_marks_the_ed]

o ok

[SaiKar]

Yeah I don't know wtf. I think I'm getting a bit high-strung. But there may actually be something here at some point.

[Valiere]

You're scaring me

[A Forgotten Legend]

You're scaring me

[zuhane]

[Moosetroop11]

Good to know nothing's happening in this thread. Wouldn't want one o' them 'something' threads full of something. Excites folks. Makes 'em jumpy.

[SaiKar]

Yeah. There is nothing in excess.


I mean, what the hell is this? Who even knows.


And I don't know what this is about, but it's probably some totally unimportant BS.



And this town that bears a passing resemblance to Arcast from my old weird game Outpost? Pure meaningless coincidence. I mean, there's only a couple of looks a small town can have anyway. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

[Osmose1000]

CHARAS + OUTPOST

THE LINE HAS BEEN CROSSED

[Razor]

I watch this with baited something.

[Moosetroop11]

On second thoughts, maybe folks should be getting excited and jumpy.

[SaiKar]

Description'd in first post

[Moosetroop11]

(note: this plot isn't a political commentary on my opinion of the current state of Charas or anything. It's just a game)

XD Somehow writing that had an opposite effect on the post to what you wanted :p

This does look awesome.  If quests are your problem then that's an easy thing to help with. We could even hold a quest writing contest.  That'd be amazing.

[Felix-0]

This looks interesting. Do want