While I waited for more responses, I also began work on the framework for the faction system. The faction system consists of:
Currently, the framework for gangs, factions, and the Guard and patrol orders work correctly.
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In general, though I find VDDs are the best way to communicate an idea to a team, I usually begin personal projects by writing a description of the context of the game and the things the player will be able to do. Sometimes I do this in the form of a pitch, but most of the time it's a few typed up paragraphs full of shorthand. From there, I go straight into prototyping the main mechanic. My intent this time was to introduce an element of faction based warfare, inspired by the movie Yojimbo. The player character's goal is to clean up a Japanese town, killing off all the corrupt factions in the city. But the PC has a tiny health pool, the threat of permadeath, and is up against hundreds of enemies. The player will be forced to ally and manipulate the rival factions to fight each other to thin their ranks as the player stealthly eliminates the factions, one gang at a time.
Taking advice from Vlandeer's GDC talks on Game Feel, I set out making some placeholder animations, adding slow-mo to hits, minor screenshake, and tons of blood etc. And most importantly, I lowered the PC's health, in order to force players to choose their battles carefully.
I constructed two builds at this point. One a combat arena, shown above to test. The other was an AI build, where I began constructing an AI for systems-based faction warfare. We'll go over the specifics of that system in a future update. I put the combat build in front of people and asked some loose questions. to guide me. The largest complaint was the lack of variety in the combat. The lack of a ranged option severely limited the player's tactical options down to cutting. The slowness of the animations and the player's slow movement made the controls feel sluggish. So my next additions were: A couple weeks ago, I brushed off my old prototypes from Senior year. The burn-out is gone and it's left a bit of an itch. Possibly a bad metaphor. Anyhow, I wanted to work on something lcean, simple, and perhaps a bit over ambitious for a one person project.
The goal of this prototype was to keep the red blocks from killing the green blocks. If you use the possessed sword mode you deal area of effect damage, but also can kill villagers, forced you to use it with precision. It was by far, my favorite prototype, even though the rest of the team decided to do a different game.
As the months dragged on after graduation, I started watching Samurai movies, or chanbara. In particular, their duel scenes. And the thought struck me as I was watch. There are many Samurai games out there. Ones where you mow down dozens of enemies a second as an invincible warrior. But there are very few Samurai games that explored the tension/release cycle of their action scenes. Nothing to represent the quick, violent bursts of action surrounded by slow, deliberate build-up. My goal became to make a satisfying combat system and find ways to create narrative and mechanical tension around it. We'll check in after our first new prototype. |
Jed MyersDeveloper Archives
February 2021
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