Chain game ideas and discussion 2022-20??

[Fisherson]

We need to sneak some scifi owl merchants in there. Personally I liked how they were in in Mystery. Acting like a secret shop. Maybe it's overkill, but we could do a custom shop for them where you can buy stuff for Owl-Tokens you find in the map.

Let me know if you want me to do some art or something. I'm down for whatever. Might not have that much time this week, but can probably get started at least.

I love that the Owl Merchant has escaped beyond the first game. Speaking of one day we should put some version of Lost and Found on the site. I know it's amateur hour compared to what we do now but it's important to the lore of every Chain Game in someway. Heart of Gold is the first not to reference Devon in some way...took me more effort than I would like to admit to not do that. Did put in Le'carvat ref though so technically it ties even there.

Yeah, if we go with many party members then the portrait and caterpillar system may be a bit bothersome.
Although I personally feel that portraits are good at emphasizing the character's importance.

How well off do we want the colony to be? Are we talking more punk in this scifi or more high end scifi? I'm thinking that the new arrivals should be cleaner and have cooler gear but the overall state of the existing things are kinda worn down. But do we want like shelters or complete buildings and such that are in disrepair?

Portraits are a must. I miss how expressive they can make a cut scene and I can say ith a lot of confidence they were 90% of why people went nuts for Spring Valley's cutscenes over other games. I also agree the caterpillar system is best with small number of people.

Hmm the tech level for the colony should be pristine/realistic at the least I think the rest of the world can have your typical alien ruins of various levels of tech.

[Momeka]

I plan to make my own part like an episode of a TV show, not just a questgiver that leads to things but entering a place which triggers a cutscene and then at the end of the cutscene you have something to resolve. Kinda like a Simpsons/Star Gate episode or something. The relevant characters will be part of it, others may make short appearances but it's an episode with its own cohesive dramatical curve. It shouldn't be much different from what we've done so far though in terms of content.

I like it, sounds solid.

How well off do we want the colony to be? Are we talking more punk in this scifi or more high end scifi? I'm thinking that the new arrivals should be cleaner and have cooler gear but the overall state of the existing things are kinda worn down. But do we want like shelters or complete buildings and such that are in disrepair?

I like the idea of the older generation being more scrappy. Like they had to survive with what tech they had and what they could make from the planet. While the new arrivals have the new hot stuff that might not even have been available when the old one left for the colony.
There could even be some tension between the old guard who survived on the colony relying on their instincts and knowledge and the new arrivals with all their gizmos and gadgets.


Like I said I haven't had much time to do art this week. But I whipped up a first npc. Sorta security guard thing of the new arrivals



Turned a bit Halo-ish but might work.

I'll try to do some more generic npcs this weekend. Maybe I can whip up a chipset as well.

How should the base chipset be like? Is it actually outdoor buildings on the planet? Or is it an orbital or underground base?

[Prpl_Mage]

Turned a bit Halo-ish but might work.

I'll try to do some more generic npcs this weekend. Maybe I can whip up a chipset as well.

How should the base chipset be like? Is it actually outdoor buildings on the planet? Or is it an orbital or underground base?

Nice! Will expand on that to make a squad.

Right now the prototype base is the Spring City Slum tileset mixed with the industry city for those slick metal-ish walls. But that's just a placeholder for me to mess around and think about dimensions and what would be suitable. Not sure how I want to play it to be honest.
A part of me want the partly successfull terraforming to show in the colony with actual grass and some partly finished Stepford Wives building, as if the original colony was made to resemble some golden age utopia.
Another part of me want it to be more run down in the style of say Borderlands' New Haven, or the style of Fallout. With some parts being clean and other beaten.
And the third part just want it to be more of an "in the dome" construction, more mechanical, as if something was just offloaded there. Of course the dome itself wouldn't be visible except from the outside.

[Moosetroop11]

I'm liking this a lot : ) I think the dome that you start in should be very new and clean, but if there was a previous expedition force that disappeared you could find that dome and it would be  acopy of the starting one but all horrible and decayed. Kind of like the fallout vaults

[Momeka]

Made some more charset.

Figures since they are like an organized team they could have uniforms based on the classes you posted before. So here's what I got:

Fighter
They are based on the first charset I posted. But made a helmet-less version as well.


Infiltrator


Engineer


Support


Totally-not-a-mage
Figures this could be like some sort of secretive special ops thing. And they are "anonymous" and never remove their helmets. But they each got a unique helmet design to keep them apart. Maybe there can be a rumor floating around that they are actually aliens masquerading as humans. Dunno, do what you want with it. 





And here are templates for all the classes. I think going the uniform design direction would speed up charset making process. Since now we just need to stick a head on them and call it done.



But one really annoying thing with the whole recruiting npcs and take them with you is that we have to do battlecharset templates for male/female and each class. That's going to be painful.



Edit:

I like the idea of a dome city. But you want it to look kinda modern? Like apartment complexes but a bit more scifi looking? I can do it. But probably won't be able to finish the chipset this weekend.

[Prpl_Mage]

Great work Momeka, gonna make some more sets with these to make them fit in.

As for Battlechars, I just assume we will make battlers for our own characters when we make them. At most I suppose we will have like 3 of each type, so that's 15. And if we don't feel like making another battlechar, then maybe that's a character that doesn't need to participate in battle.

And yeah, let's go for the dome for the hub. It would make sense. Maybe living quarters isn't the big problem here but power and energy etc instead.

[Moosetroop11]

Those look great : ) Nice one! No rush with the chipset, we're not on a time limit here at the beginning.

[Momeka]

This week has been pretty stressful too so I haven't managed to get anything done. But I'll see if I can get started on the city chipset over the weekend.

[Prpl_Mage]

No problem, I'm thinking of starting the actual work in March, so just messing around with some character planning, sprites, some systems etc to build on when the time is right.

[Fisherson]

There is one cocern I have. Will we be able to make a Mythic Dawn style bad guy or a Alduin styled central threat? Cause like it or not our stories have always been bad guy centric even when it turns out it's a feint like it was with Olokun seeming evil until we got to know him and understood WHY he was doing what he was doing. Heck Moose set out to make Heart of Gold with no real bad guy and ended up Voltronining in a villain that made others look kinda simple by comparison. Say what you will about the first Chain Game "Lost and Found", which we should totally put some version of on the site, but one thing it didn't lack was villains to the point of being almost as convoluted as KH in the layers of them what with the Fiend Inc seeming to be our big bad only to reveal there were free agents like Bluman's The Masked Killer which lead to finding out even he was just an Agent of the org and there was even a division above, well in the afterlife, of Fiend Inc.

I digress getting lost in nostalgia and reminding myself of why Purps thinks we need a wiki at this point but it is there: we use villains t drive a plot forward which is notoriously tricky in open ended games. TES even does it kind of poorly sometimes as it breaks up the story 'line' when you have mercurial bad guys. I would say the best example I've ever seen in possibly in Mas Effect until the end chapter. We should take a moment to analyze some central villains in media cause while one strength we can rely on is "plenty of threats out there" like we did with Juno we did almost **** that up till Red tossed in Wodan who helped me tie it all together....<.< Cause you know I fucked up the Perses by having Juno blow up/save their planet to get a private army...Which should have been part of the ending come to think of it. XD Hindsight is 20-20.

[Prpl_Mage]

Didn't you say we should avoid the big villain showdown earlier in this thread?

Right now I have some threats outlined, although there isn't a villain per say. People that are clear antagonists to what the player wants to do? Sure. The very real threat of the colony falling because of the lack of power? Yes. Alien wildlife on the world - hell yeah. Possible xeno civ incursion happening? Maaaybe...

[Prpl_Mage]

Hey it's March now!

Not a lot of progress on the game itself. Had a bit of a brick wall with parallel process common events not working as intended which forced me to add things to the maps, not ideal but easily worked with at least.
Tried to flesh out some characters and plan skills and such. Thinking that if we set up most of the "battle event" skills from the start it will be less fiddly later on.

One of the things I wanted to take from Heart of Gold is the limited MP, without leveling up Mp will be limited from the start and can be increased through items/upgrades. It also makes Items that invokes skills more important. Does it sound like a good idea or not?

As for the main character, I have 3 suggestions for his predicament.
1. He is merely there because one of his parents are important for the colony, such as a scientist/engineer etc.
2. He won a competition, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory style. Not everyone likes this.
3. He was supposed to take care of the goats, however, all the goats have fled and mutated so there is no need to take care of any goats. Except for... taking care of them *wink*.

Made some varieties of the class suits just so it's easies to make new characters without everyone looking too much the same. But once again, I kinda expect people to make meaningful characters stand out anyway.

[Moosetroop11]

I quite like the 'important parents' idea because they could be a good source of early missions. And yeah, limited MP sounds cool, I like the idea of that resource management where you only use the powerful stuff when you need to.

[Prpl_Mage]

Not a lot of progress this week either I'm afraid. Could use some more inspiration go get off my ***.

Skill ideas for the different classes though:

Fighter
Med kit - heal self
Lasers - big damage single target
X shot - Elemental damage
X laser - Big elemental damage
Battle stims/Rage - increases most stats on self
Flashbang/Disarm - inflicts "blind" that prevents attacks form hitting
Grenade/Mass attack - deals damage to all enemies
Critical strike/Pierce - ignores target's defense
Barrier/Sentinel - prevents non-fighters from taking damage
Support system - heal all allies but not self
Tenderize - decrease enemy def by 10


Infiltrator
Fuel cells - restore mp
Headshot - big damage single target
X shot - Elemental damage
X blast - Big elemental damage
Cloak - dodge all self, stun, heal
Crag shot - damage and stun
Grenade - multi hit attack, ignores defense
Rapid Fire - multi hit attack
First aid kit - heal an ally, remove some status
Infection - inflict poison
Caltrops - slow all enemies


Specialist (Previously Engineer)
Energy surge - restore mp any ally
Rocket - big damage single target
X shot - Elemental damage all enemies
Physical protection all
Elemental protection all
Stun all enemies
decrease enemy resistance
remove enemy positive effects
Berserk
Silence
inflict barrier, double def


Support
Supporting fire - Inflict haste on allies
Reinforce - increase ally's def by 20
Increase ally's atk by 10
Increase ally's mag by 10
Increase ally's dex by 20
Remove incapacitating status
Remove damage dealing status
Remove enemy effects, barrier, rage, haste, insight
Revive dead
Heal ally
Heal all allies
 

Spectre (previously "totally-not-a-mage")
Elemental damage
Elemental damage all
Elemental big damage
Elemental massive damage
Double casting
Mp steal
Inflict Sleep all
Inflict poison all
Hp steal
Elemental 2 damage
Elemental 2 damage all

Didn't come up with names for all of the skills. Not sure if we want standardized names and skills for all characters. I figured characters can have different elements for their skills to create some more variety and usefulness.
Also, maybe make the Fighter a pure melee class to make it stand out more?

As for elements, this is the idea:
Fire - it's fire, like a flamethrower
Poison - acid, poison, stuff like that. Not just a status effect, damage type as well.
Plasma - what even is plasma except extreme energy and heat? It's an element now
Electric - cattle prods, tazers, tesla guns, emperor's shock. Stuff like that.
Cryonic - because ice is cool. Get it? Cool!
Psionic - super special mind damage
Melee - all things melee, blades or blunts, doesn't matter.
Range - all things ranged, guns, nail guns etc.
Shake - like an earthquake, war stomp, etc. Flying stuff should be immune to this.
Absorb - element for hp steal and mp steal. Some enemies would be immune to this.

Do we want fancier coded skills? I assume we want to get those into the project as soon as possible then.

[Momeka]

Sorry, I've been MIA a lot. I can also get off my *** and look into the base chipsets.

The skills sounds solid. I like it. Maybe the fighters could be trained with some cool melee weapon. Like they are wielding some fancy scifi spears or something.

Do we want fancier coded skills? I assume we want to get those into the project as soon as possible then.

I think we can save custom coded skills for the hero. I don't think it's too bad to add it as we go. Just need to copy paste a bunch of stuff. But I think who ever decide to add it should make sure they make it work with all the combat that is in the game up to that point.

Didn't you say we should avoid the big villain showdown earlier in this thread?

I rather not have some big villian. Instead have the harsh planet and the group survival be the main driving force in the game.

3. He was supposed to take care of the goats, however, all the goats have fled and mutated so there is no need to take care of any goats. Except for... taking care of them *wink*.

This one sounds solid, I like it!