Post Machina (working title) (a WIP RPG framework for now)

[velocirection]

I've been working on a turn-based rpg in AGS for a couple days. I've got basic combat down in a system that should make it pretty easy to add new actions, enemies, etc... I've got selecting commands, selecting monsters, multiple heroes, monster deaths, monster animation states, bouncing damage numbers, intense battle transition, my own follower system (well the start of it), touching monsters for battles, yada yada.


Story
The story is still really unclear to me, but it would be about the impacts automation, greed and short-term growth have on planet that is not prepared to deal with the rapid introduction in technology. There would be some large corporation (Let's call it Walizon) who's goal is introduce their services with cheap, mass produced goods (made through a combination of automation and exploitative meat bag labor) and price out vendors in small communities all around the world, with the intention of making everyone reliant on them as their employer and where they get their goods from.

The means to create a "living machine" would require some kind of fossil-fuel analogy that's toxic to the planet when burned or energized or however it'll work.

The intention of discovering the "spark of life" that can move inanimate things was to create a world where people had to spend less time working and could live a more fulfilling, meaningful lie. But the tech has been misused by Walizon and it's board members to do the exact opposite- force people to work more by taking their livelihood away and controlling their means to live.

There'd be something about a hero that comes about when they're needed the most (which is you, you're a little dragon guy) to put an end to this corporation's greed and destruction and heal the world from it's actions. Some typical RPG stuff. The setting would be Final Fantasian, like a mixture of fantasy and science fiction.

Some screenshots. Nothing pretty at the moment!


This video gives a better idea of what things are looking like so far:
https://youtu.be/GOpTV6Kif7Y

Gameplay
The game would play like a standard turn-based RPG like Dragon Quest. Maybe I'll try doing something unique but maybe not. I would like to inject some adventure game aspects into it, like using the mouse to click on things like in an adventure game. But you would use WASD to move around the field (click to walk as an option) and the cursor could be used to move camera a bit, to look around the player's sprite.

Aesthetic
I'll be shooting for a pre-rendered sprite and background look. I'm pretty good with 3d (I do a lot of character animation/modeling for my patreon) but I won't be doing much art for this until I have the gameplay systems done. The look I want to go for is essentially Saga Frontier, that's the best example I can think of for now (but if you're familiar wit 3d graphics of the 90s, you'll know the vibe)
https://youtu.be/QDxuNAUdws4

Progress
Still a long way from actually having measurable progress game wise. But the foundation of the battle system and field system is getting there. I just now started on a custom keyboard movement system (the built in character movement makes sprites tremble when they move at non-right angles when doing stuff with the camera and I don't like it)

[heltenjon]

Looks like you're making a good foundation here. Interesting project!

[newwaveburritos]

Oh, nice!  This is the kind of thing that I like!!

[velocirection]

Looks like you're making a good foundation here. Interesting project!

Oh, nice!  This is the kind of thing that I like!!

Thank you both! A bit more progress. Got the custom movement system working, added battle messages and also made some quick placeholder graphics for an enemy and a character.



It's not supposed to look good, just to give a semblance of an idea of what things might be like. Like how big a hero sprite would be, how big a tiny grunt enemy would be, how it would look with longer animations for enemy actions... all these things are important to the experience of the game.

I've been thinking about having the character sprites visible too, at the bottom of the screen. It wouldn't be difficult to add in since heroes already have an object associated with them (they're just hidden)


I'd like to visualize commands in a some kind of metaphor for thinking, like the character turns to face the camera, looks like they're thinking and each command is a button or icon floating around the character. But I don't want it to be too obtrusive or difficult to select. Or even if I'd have the characters visible.

Video:
https://youtu.be/5KTZzE41Kjs

[Khris]

Looking great so far, reminds me very much of Chrono Trigger, and clearly focuses on the visual aspect from the start, which is something I can never manage to do myself

Regarding the interface I'd make more use of the mouse tbh; right now you're basically clicking on a gamepad menu but if the game is built around mouse controls I'd scrap the four button approach and build this with a mouse in mind from the start.

Want to attack an enemy? Just click them.
Switch to a different party member? Click them.
Want to use a recovery item? Just click it. (Requires a bar displaying these obviously.)
Want to defend? Right-click the mouse anywhere.

Unless of course you want to also offer gamepad controls, however even with those I'd probably completely change the classic controls. I'd probably use LB/RB to switch enemies/party members and use the D-pad for the various actions (up = attack, down = defend, etc.).

Finally, fighting is a major part of a game like this, and the arguably most important thing (at least for me) is to be able to basically hold down a button to auto-fight against a weak enemy. In Chrono Cross for instance you just need to spam the X button and your party will automatically pick the strongest physical attack that is likely to land, making the fight last as short as possible. This is invaluable for areas of the game where weak enemies respawn.
The same should be possible for a mouse-driven interface, as in clicking in between enemies should attack the closer one so you don't need to move the mouse after an enemy is killed and the game re-centers the remaining ones.

[velocirection]

Thank you Khris. I'm a big fan of Chrono Trigger (Chrono Cross less so, I couldn't get over how drawn out every battle was but I liked everything else about it) All good advice- but I would like to avoid too many filler battles. I think that if the player does come across weaker enemies, maybe it does an Earthbound thing and autowins if you're a high enough level.

I've been on the fence about how much I want to deviate from a standard menu setup- I'm still not sure about using the mouse and keyboard or not to be honest! That's a good idea... I might go with a slot-based command/item approach, like an inventory system for both. The left mouse click on a monster would do the first command in whatever they have assigned (which would be attack by default, but I'd like to give players the flexibility to change it how they want). But the command and item slots would be visible, so you could pick whatever wanted.

Then, a text description of what the action is looking like, like if you're hero 1, selected to use your skill Tail Spin, and were hovering over monster1, the battle text would say:
Hero1 > Selected "Tail Spin" > Use on Monster1

I think I'd reserve right click for undo, which would revert to the previous state though. I think mapping undo to a something the player can do quickly would work best, but who knows. I'll prototype this stuff soon.

Edit: maybe something like this:

[newwaveburritos]

It would be pretty hilarious if you kept your mock-up as finished art.  This sounds like the kind of game that would benefit from some ample play-testing so lemme know if you need a hand with it. 

(By the way, I sent you a DM about this but I think if you're new to the forum they're pretty easy to overlook.  But maybe you're just not interested and that's fine, too!)

[velocirection]

Hey it's been awhile, but I decided to switch to using game maker instead of AGS- it was just becoming too limiting and I kept having to do work arounds for stuff. I really do love programming in AGS, but I was trying to do too much weird stuff with it.

I didn't like implementing a lot of stuff that AGS does in GM though, like a wait system for cutscenes, GUI stuff, collisions for walkable areas, hotspots, etc... honestly game maker sucks to make an RPG in, but the trade off is more flexibility with a lot of stuff, some fancy built in data structures that make life easier for this kind of thing, more advanced and efficient graphics drawing options... This isn't anything fancy, it's some animated tiling images, but it's using some masking stuff using a large image (2048x2048) that might be slow in AGS.



Here's a playlist of progress stuff on the game maker version:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw26Ob3CaoP2xfgokUKcGBEJCOt770o5p

So feel free to close this thread! It's no longer an AGS game in production.