Fair warning before I start this: After some analysis, I have already made the decision to go with this concept over Contact Sport, Adventurer, or Artificer (or the hazy spacepunk RTS concept that unfortunately never took off. You shall be missed, "Grande Machines"). The reasoning for this should be obvious from the pros and cons when listed, but even if not I'll be posting my thought processes at a later date. Without any further ado:
Templars of Kayne
High Fantasy Strategic Shooter
Templars of Kayne is a moba-esque two dimensional shooter with strategic elements (I'm well aware that the last bit means virtually nothing, but oh well). Plaers choose from a selection of characters, with a variety of unique abilities and roles, and are placed onto a planetoid arena, with 5 capture pillars spaced around it. Players are separated into two equal teams, and start off at a capture pillar. Your team wins if they are able to capture all of the pillars on the arena. Pretty simple. The hard part is actually doing it.
More specifically!
The breakdown of the genres is as follows:
The MOBA-esque part comes in the selection of characters. In Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games, such as Defense of the Ancients, League of Legends, or Heroes of Newerth players select from a large roster of characters, each with their own characterisation and unique abilities, and use this character throughout a given match. The way this differs from the middle of the freedom scale as I described in a previous post is the scale of the roster- at the time of writing, there are 97 Heroes in DotA, and 111 Champions in League of Legends. For (I hope) obvious reasons, I will be starting off with a roster of around 30- enough to leave a decent choice and spread of roles, but not so many as to make the process of design and balancing impossibly complex. Additionally, forcing players to use the same Templar throughout the match means that teams can be picked strategically, rather than reactionary countering, as is an issue in some games.
The Two Dimensional part is me beating a dying horse, and making the arena a circular, gravitationally centred planetoid. You may recognize this idea if you've read *any* of my previous posts. I'm unwilling to scrap it right now, partially because of the fact that I'm really stubborn, but mostly because people seem to react well to the idea, and it in general sounds like a fun mechanic. The reason I'm not going even further is because three dimensions would be considerably beyond my technical capabilities, which would be an issue.
The shooter part is because I honestly can't think of a better way to describe it. It's a shooter only in the loosest sense of the word, due to the high fantasy setting- guns are not a concept that exist, and beyond the odd crossbow or conjurer, most of the combat is up close and personal. However, there isn't really a name for that genre, as far as I can tell, so shooter it remains for now.
From a technical standpoint, there would be several stages to playing the game. Stage 1, a lobby client is loaded up, and the player is matched up with nine other players (or something), and split into the two teams. At this point, they would be given open communications between themselves, likely through some variety of built-in text or voice relay, through which they are able to discuss Templar choices, strategy, and the like. Through this client, they'd be able to select a Templar and indicate that they are ready to start. When all players are ready to start, a second client is launched for the game itself, connecting all players to a gameserver and starting it off. At that point, the players are given free reign to kill each other and capture pillars to their heart's content, until one team wins, at which point all players are booted back out to the lobby client to play again if they so wish.
For the reasons indicated earlier with regards to multiplayer games and playing with friends, there should be some means of allowing players to choose who to play with- meaning that a third layer of client may be necessary.
Gameplay itself consists of running around with your team, fighting with and against the aforementioned unique characters, and capturing pillars. In order to capture a pillar, players would need to stand by it, uninterrupted, for several seconds- meaning that they can only feasibly do so if no enemies are nearby. If players are killed, they come back a little while later at one of their team's pillars.
I said it was simple, didn't I?
Pros:
Scores in the most highly rated slots in the survey.
Easy to pick up, hopefully.
Simple to code the actual game part.
Cons:
Multiple layers of client could be difficult to code.
Balancing and creation of assets would be an uphill struggle.
Server costs may be high (but not as high as the other concepts)
So, there we have it. Thought processes and further details coming soon!
Friday, 22 March 2013
Friday, 15 March 2013
Research Log, Part 2: The Researchening!
So! Just come back from FRC, time to talk about what I've been doing in the other track of this project, so to speak. As I've probably made clear already, I'm tackling this from two sides, while entwining the two as and when I'm able to- these sides being the business side, and the creation side. I've talked a lot about the creation side, but the business side is starting to be a major focus of research for me, so it's time to talk about it some more!
I've been looking into how you go about selling a product, or more accurately how you design a product in order that it is saleable, and how to make those sales. The first thing I've learned, succinctly, is that traditional research isn't going to help.
Less succinctly: The internet makes things weird. Traditional wisdom on buisness is that you have to consider the 4 Ps when setting a product for sale- these being Price, Place, Product, and Promotion. The internet messes with all of these royally.
Place is the most obvious one. Traditionally, you need to consider where you are selling the product from- how people are going to find your shop, whether people will wander past, things like that- but I don't have a shop. I have a website, at most. By definition, people are unlikely to wander past- any journeys here are going to be deliberate- but on the other hand, it lends convenience.
Then there's Promotion. Promotion would have to be almost entirely net based as well- which, granted, is less alien an idea than it could be, but is still the sort of thing there exists very little in any literature I've been able to find. However, there is still hope- I've been looking into services such as Project Wonderful and Google Adwords, which are designed specifically for internet-based promotion.
Product is another one that's an issue. Traditionally, this is the consideration of who your competitors are, and what the Unique Selling Point of your product is. Unfortunately, there happen to be a heck of a lot of people on the internet who make games too. So this tells me my product is going to have to *really* stand out from the crowd in order to be even noticed.
Finally, there's Price. Simply put, if there's no production costs, any money is profit. And even there, I'm starting to wonder whether I really want to charge money for it, or use the free to play model- something proving a popular concept with many modern games. But again, this leads to other issues, such as server costs and maintainance, etc.
So, long story short, I've got to figure this out for myself. Short story long? Anything by Dostoyevsky. (I regret nothing!)
So, that's the state of affairs at the moment. Phillammon out!
I've been looking into how you go about selling a product, or more accurately how you design a product in order that it is saleable, and how to make those sales. The first thing I've learned, succinctly, is that traditional research isn't going to help.
Less succinctly: The internet makes things weird. Traditional wisdom on buisness is that you have to consider the 4 Ps when setting a product for sale- these being Price, Place, Product, and Promotion. The internet messes with all of these royally.
Place is the most obvious one. Traditionally, you need to consider where you are selling the product from- how people are going to find your shop, whether people will wander past, things like that- but I don't have a shop. I have a website, at most. By definition, people are unlikely to wander past- any journeys here are going to be deliberate- but on the other hand, it lends convenience.
Then there's Promotion. Promotion would have to be almost entirely net based as well- which, granted, is less alien an idea than it could be, but is still the sort of thing there exists very little in any literature I've been able to find. However, there is still hope- I've been looking into services such as Project Wonderful and Google Adwords, which are designed specifically for internet-based promotion.
Product is another one that's an issue. Traditionally, this is the consideration of who your competitors are, and what the Unique Selling Point of your product is. Unfortunately, there happen to be a heck of a lot of people on the internet who make games too. So this tells me my product is going to have to *really* stand out from the crowd in order to be even noticed.
Finally, there's Price. Simply put, if there's no production costs, any money is profit. And even there, I'm starting to wonder whether I really want to charge money for it, or use the free to play model- something proving a popular concept with many modern games. But again, this leads to other issues, such as server costs and maintainance, etc.
So, long story short, I've got to figure this out for myself. Short story long? Anything by Dostoyevsky. (I regret nothing!)
So, that's the state of affairs at the moment. Phillammon out!
Sunday, 3 March 2013
Concept: Adventurer and Artificer!
It wasn't the weekend I was aiming for, but here it is! Much more to report in my next post, I just haven't been getting around to committing things here. So here goes:
Adventurer
Standard Hack-and-Slash RPG
Adventurer is a standard hack-and-slash style RPG. Players choose from 1 of 4 classes (Warrior, Mage, Slinger or Monk), and adventure through a series of areas with a range of monsters in them, to obtain large amounts of money as a reward. As they progress, they level up, with each level become progressively harder to obtain. Each time a player levels up, their stats increase- said stats can also be increased through equipment. This is all fairly standard stuff. The unique section of this RPG is that there is no way for adventurers to directly obtain equipment, and no way to directly obtain money beyond the completion of adventures- that is to say, beating up monsters doesn't miraculously generate money and equipment. This is to make sure players have to interact with shops.
More specifically!
In Adventurer, players will go in a fairly sequential order through a set of locations, completing an arbitrary quest within each one for an amount of money. Along the way, they will battle monsters, solve puzzles, the usual. Combat is handled in a turn based basis, but using staggered turns- in other words, a character with a "Speed" of 1 would have a third as many turns as a character with a "Speed" of 3. This gives players a certain degree of customization- they could maximize any stat in particular they want, or build in a more balanced fashion, and still come out just as well either way. For obvious reasons, this would require careful competitive balancing.
The statistics in the game would likely be Strength, Magic, Agility and Speed. Strength would be the primary focus of the Warrior class- it's used for determining how hard you smash things with your stick, and determining how much you can be hit with a stick before you fall down. Magic is the primary statistic of the Mage class, used for throwing spells around, and finding how hard the spells hit, and how many spells you can use. Agility is much the same, but for ranged weapons, with the added bonus of determining how good at dodging you are, and is favoured by the Slinger class, and Speed determines turn order, how fast you hit, and is the focus of the Monk class. Each class would gain bonuses to these stats as they defeat monsters, with most of the bonuses going into the primary stat for their class.
The economy of the game would be the unique selling point, hopefully. None of the shops in the game would be NPC controlled, but instead would be controlled by players of Artificer (see below). Players are able to sell what they find on their adventures (for example, bits of monster, or collected plants, or mined rocks, etc, etc, etc) to these shops, and buy essential equipment, potions, yadda yadda yadda, from said shops. Money would enter the economy via the money obtained at the end of missions, and money can be sunk out of the economy later on in the process, in Artificer. This means the two ends of the in-game economy- the resource collection and the resource refinement and resale- are in symbiosis, linking the two games together.
Pros:
-It's a High-Fantasy RPG, and RPGs and High Fantasy came out on top in the survey
-Replay value inasmuch as there are 4 paths to try and "complete" the game through
Cons:
-Very generic, as far as concepts go.
-Server costs would be astronomical.
-Reliant on not one, but TWO games being both feasible and successful
And while I'm here, let's go two for one in a single post:
Artificer
Resource Management Strategy/Puzzle
In Artificer, players control a small shop in a fantasy universe. Where in the outside world, Warriors, Mages, Slingers and Monks go about their business valiantly saving the world, you stay inside keeping them ready to go! The players manage their shop through (most likely) a mobile or web interface, setting the prices at which they're willing to buy ingredients and reagents from adventurers, choosing what to create from said ingredients and reagents, and choosing what price to sell the finished products at.
More Specifically:
Artificer is a fairly standard "Dungeon Shop"-esque game, but with more of an involvement aspect to it. Rather than arbitrarily having NPCs coming up and buying stuff from your shop, as is the case in most Dungeon Shop games, it would be directly linked to the shops in Adventurer- or in other words, players of Adventurer would use Artificer players as item shops. This creates a virtual economy between the two games, and creates two ways to approach the 'verse- either from the resource management side here, or the RPG side in Adventurer.
Players beginning a game of Artificer would be given a small amount of money and a shop in the first locale. From this shop, they would be able to buy items from and sell items to Adventurers in the first locale- hereinafter "newbies". While still Newbie Artificers, they would only be able to obtain reagents and ingredients that can be found in the first locale, meaning they can only craft gear, potions, etc from what can be found in the starting zone, and thus, the gear they produce is quite poor, and can't sell for much. This would encourage players to move to later locales- however, instead of completing quests, like the Adventurers, Artificers wanting to move up a locale would have to buy a new shop, for a large one time cost, and a further incremental "rent" to be payed out at regular intervals afterwards.
The Artificer interface would consist of three major areas- Buying, Crafting and Selling. In the buying interface, Artificers would set what items they are looking for, and at what price they are willing to buy them. Adventurer players are able to see these prices, and sell their items in this manner. On the crafting screen, Artificers select what they would like to create, setting a job list of what to do. Creating objects takes a significant amount of real world time, which players can mitigate by, for example, hiring more workers, or buying better crafting equipment (more useful money sinks). An example of how this would work: An Artificer has in inventory 3 rusty greatspoons, 3 whetstones, a potion of unspeakably awful acid, and a potion of unspeakably vile poison. They would be able to set up in their crafting screen to have the three rusty spoons sharpened in parallel (assuming they have 3 workers available), then pour the potions on two of the swords. This would take a set amount of time for each task- say, an hour to sharpen each greatspoon, and 10 minutes to potion-ize them, but an hour and ten minutes later, the Artificer would have 3 new Greatspoons to sell to a passing Warrior!
In order to keep the economy stable, money could be put into and taken out of the economy through the quest rewards in Adventurer, grants being given to shops in Artificer, and, obviously enough, the various money sinks- Shop Costs, Rent, New Gear, Hiring Workers- as described so far.
Pros:
-It's a High-Fantasy Strategy, and Strategy games and High Fantasy came out on top in the survey
-"Play Every Day" value in being able to set up crafting tasks on finding out what's being bought/sold
-Artificial Economy lets people learn business and economics, at a very basic level, as they play
Cons:
-Possibly not fun. And this would be a biggie.
-Server costs would be astronomical.
-Reliant on not one, but TWO games being both feasible and successful
Adventurer
Standard Hack-and-Slash RPG
Adventurer is a standard hack-and-slash style RPG. Players choose from 1 of 4 classes (Warrior, Mage, Slinger or Monk), and adventure through a series of areas with a range of monsters in them, to obtain large amounts of money as a reward. As they progress, they level up, with each level become progressively harder to obtain. Each time a player levels up, their stats increase- said stats can also be increased through equipment. This is all fairly standard stuff. The unique section of this RPG is that there is no way for adventurers to directly obtain equipment, and no way to directly obtain money beyond the completion of adventures- that is to say, beating up monsters doesn't miraculously generate money and equipment. This is to make sure players have to interact with shops.
More specifically!
In Adventurer, players will go in a fairly sequential order through a set of locations, completing an arbitrary quest within each one for an amount of money. Along the way, they will battle monsters, solve puzzles, the usual. Combat is handled in a turn based basis, but using staggered turns- in other words, a character with a "Speed" of 1 would have a third as many turns as a character with a "Speed" of 3. This gives players a certain degree of customization- they could maximize any stat in particular they want, or build in a more balanced fashion, and still come out just as well either way. For obvious reasons, this would require careful competitive balancing.
The statistics in the game would likely be Strength, Magic, Agility and Speed. Strength would be the primary focus of the Warrior class- it's used for determining how hard you smash things with your stick, and determining how much you can be hit with a stick before you fall down. Magic is the primary statistic of the Mage class, used for throwing spells around, and finding how hard the spells hit, and how many spells you can use. Agility is much the same, but for ranged weapons, with the added bonus of determining how good at dodging you are, and is favoured by the Slinger class, and Speed determines turn order, how fast you hit, and is the focus of the Monk class. Each class would gain bonuses to these stats as they defeat monsters, with most of the bonuses going into the primary stat for their class.
The economy of the game would be the unique selling point, hopefully. None of the shops in the game would be NPC controlled, but instead would be controlled by players of Artificer (see below). Players are able to sell what they find on their adventures (for example, bits of monster, or collected plants, or mined rocks, etc, etc, etc) to these shops, and buy essential equipment, potions, yadda yadda yadda, from said shops. Money would enter the economy via the money obtained at the end of missions, and money can be sunk out of the economy later on in the process, in Artificer. This means the two ends of the in-game economy- the resource collection and the resource refinement and resale- are in symbiosis, linking the two games together.
Pros:
-It's a High-Fantasy RPG, and RPGs and High Fantasy came out on top in the survey
-Replay value inasmuch as there are 4 paths to try and "complete" the game through
Cons:
-Very generic, as far as concepts go.
-Server costs would be astronomical.
-Reliant on not one, but TWO games being both feasible and successful
And while I'm here, let's go two for one in a single post:
Artificer
Resource Management Strategy/Puzzle
In Artificer, players control a small shop in a fantasy universe. Where in the outside world, Warriors, Mages, Slingers and Monks go about their business valiantly saving the world, you stay inside keeping them ready to go! The players manage their shop through (most likely) a mobile or web interface, setting the prices at which they're willing to buy ingredients and reagents from adventurers, choosing what to create from said ingredients and reagents, and choosing what price to sell the finished products at.
More Specifically:
Artificer is a fairly standard "Dungeon Shop"-esque game, but with more of an involvement aspect to it. Rather than arbitrarily having NPCs coming up and buying stuff from your shop, as is the case in most Dungeon Shop games, it would be directly linked to the shops in Adventurer- or in other words, players of Adventurer would use Artificer players as item shops. This creates a virtual economy between the two games, and creates two ways to approach the 'verse- either from the resource management side here, or the RPG side in Adventurer.
Players beginning a game of Artificer would be given a small amount of money and a shop in the first locale. From this shop, they would be able to buy items from and sell items to Adventurers in the first locale- hereinafter "newbies". While still Newbie Artificers, they would only be able to obtain reagents and ingredients that can be found in the first locale, meaning they can only craft gear, potions, etc from what can be found in the starting zone, and thus, the gear they produce is quite poor, and can't sell for much. This would encourage players to move to later locales- however, instead of completing quests, like the Adventurers, Artificers wanting to move up a locale would have to buy a new shop, for a large one time cost, and a further incremental "rent" to be payed out at regular intervals afterwards.
The Artificer interface would consist of three major areas- Buying, Crafting and Selling. In the buying interface, Artificers would set what items they are looking for, and at what price they are willing to buy them. Adventurer players are able to see these prices, and sell their items in this manner. On the crafting screen, Artificers select what they would like to create, setting a job list of what to do. Creating objects takes a significant amount of real world time, which players can mitigate by, for example, hiring more workers, or buying better crafting equipment (more useful money sinks). An example of how this would work: An Artificer has in inventory 3 rusty greatspoons, 3 whetstones, a potion of unspeakably awful acid, and a potion of unspeakably vile poison. They would be able to set up in their crafting screen to have the three rusty spoons sharpened in parallel (assuming they have 3 workers available), then pour the potions on two of the swords. This would take a set amount of time for each task- say, an hour to sharpen each greatspoon, and 10 minutes to potion-ize them, but an hour and ten minutes later, the Artificer would have 3 new Greatspoons to sell to a passing Warrior!
In order to keep the economy stable, money could be put into and taken out of the economy through the quest rewards in Adventurer, grants being given to shops in Artificer, and, obviously enough, the various money sinks- Shop Costs, Rent, New Gear, Hiring Workers- as described so far.
Pros:
-It's a High-Fantasy Strategy, and Strategy games and High Fantasy came out on top in the survey
-"Play Every Day" value in being able to set up crafting tasks on finding out what's being bought/sold
-Artificial Economy lets people learn business and economics, at a very basic level, as they play
Cons:
-Possibly not fun. And this would be a biggie.
-Server costs would be astronomical.
-Reliant on not one, but TWO games being both feasible and successful
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