This is the first game development post I'm writing on this blog heh...
Alright... so over the past few months I've been working quite solidly on the RPG (alongside Bounty Hunter 2 which I may update soon because I have a quite a good amount to say about that).
Firstly,
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| Well, it's just a bunch of buttons for now... |
I have a shop system all good and working.
As you can see, you can buy food, characters and moves.
Isn't that cool? It kind of reminds me of the tavern from the IOS game "Slayin'" where you could buy new characters to fiddle around with.
How do you get the money?
By defeating enemies of course!
I'm pretty sure most of you may assume that food can be used in battle as a healing item.
But that's not the case with this game.
Instead food is used as a way of permanently increasing character stats (like TWEWY).
You need to win a certain amount of battles in order to do this (again, like TWEWY).
I feel like this is a good mechanic to have players strengthen their characters and give the game some sort of replay value (because it's an arcade RPG, it's a GIVEN that these should have replay value).
It makes the game more personalized, as you can experiment with seeing which food item does what to the characters and how their stats increase.
There are 3 playable characters that you can buy from the store to assist Redler on his adventure, each with their own strengths and weaknesess.
And of course Moves!
Which nicely gets me to moves.
You can buy moves from the store which add a move to Redler (or any of the characters) which you can mess with or use to your advantage.
Obviously these items get unlocked as the player progresses through the game by getting stronger.
Secondly,
I would like to mention about the more back-end stuff (I honestly love that they even call it that).
Let me tell you some amazing advice that will make your life easier.
If you want to make an RPG, it would be ideal to have a spreadsheet.
Why?
Because you can see what kind of stats your characters have at a certain level (which is processed by calculations I've come up with).
It helps balance the game without having to constantly play test the game over and over again.
It includes stats not only for players but for enemies as well.
In any future RPGs I desire to make, it will be a golden standard to use spreadsheets.
As you may see here - characters have about 4 stats (actually they have 5 now if you count "Special points" which is basically my game's version of mana, I'm too lazy to put it on there. Feel free to call me out if the game isn't balanced in terms of SP).
This is because I honestly don't like it when RPG's throw a million stats that you have to somehow understand.
I.e. skill, resistance, guts, vitality, mt, whatever
I can see that these may increase other things like skill increasing the amount of critical hits or guts increasing the likelihood of your character auto-reviving or enduring with 1 hp remaining or such like.
But personaly I think that, whilst it adds depth to gameplay - it dosen't make it fun or enjoyable.
This is why I'd prefer just 4-5 stats rather than 9 or heck even 15!
It's also because I want to keep the scope for this project relatively low since it's my 1st RPG that I actually thought about these things.
I also think less is more in these kind of situations.
How about make defence increase the amount of health you recover in battle?
Or having intelligence increase the amount of SP you recover each turn?
Or even having less stats work with each other?
No need for 15 stats!
Looking at you Final Fantasy!
Well... hey! This is all food for thought, though.
Thirdly
I have also implemented some system where it spawns random enemies based on the kinds it stores in a list.Like the shop, it changes as you progress through the game, spawning a larger variety and stronger enemies.
There is a level cap in the enemy selectors, meaning that when you get to a certain level, it will go to the next enemy selector to spawn the next set of enemies.
These kinds of things are far easier than just hard-coding things into the game.
It takes a workload off me, I'll only have to focus on implementing the enemies into the game (things like sprite animations, moves, stats etc).
I've also done an editor sort of like this in Bounty Hunter 2.
But that will be saved for when I write about that game.
Summing Up
Development is overall going pretty nicely.
I like what this game is becoming,
Even if it's full of flaws - you don't always get things right the first time.
Obviously the second or third effort will be better.
The important thing here is that I've learned quite a lot about what goes into an RPG.
That's what matters the most to me.
Now if you don't mind, I've got to work on the enemies and characters and... lots of things...
Including schoolwork too!
That's all from me!
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