I'm already thinking about my next game. It will include some of the material contained in this thread, but as of now I'm leaving out the astral projection. I think I'll use that idea for another game. In any case, I plan to make this entry in the Series based on episodic content. This means that I'll release two short, self contained episodes that lead up to the events of the third episode, which will be where the meat of the episodes is located. If you read the thread in the link above, you'll see that I'm going to make it based on two powerful houses, and their links to a thieves' guild and an assassins' guild.

I was just going to make one game as described in the above link, but I feel that I am not really ready to undertake a game of that scale quite yet. I'm actually in the mood to do something fairly short and simple. Therefore, I've decided to make a three episode story arc, with the first two episodes being the rise of the two houses and their initial ties to the guilds, and the third episode pretty much being as described in the above link. The thing that was holding me back from making that game was a lack of ideas in terms of a strong cause and effect relationship between events that would lead to either getting the initial bad ending, and then on second playthrough getting the "good" ending. But I spent a while last night and some time this morning coming up with a storyline based on the stealing/assassination aspects of the game. The games will refer to events that happened in previous games in Series 4, and certain characters will be referenced in all three games. In other words, I plan on making a self-contained world, with events that carry over from one game to the next.

The first two parts should not be that hard or take that long to program, and will hopefully be released in a timely fashion. The third part will take a lot longer to program, and will undoubtedly come out in the distant future. I'm pledging to myself, though, that I'm going to see this thing through, and not start something else between episodes. Hopefully each episode will not last that long (I'm shooting for between 4-7 hours per episode). Seeing as how this is going to be heavily story-based, it's going to be fairly linear, and will not involve a lot of decision-making on the part of the player. Take that as a good or a bad thing, it's the way it will have to be to tell the story I want to tell.

I'm not going to get too heavily involved in releasing details of the story right now, besides that which I already wrote. I want it to be a bit of a surprise when the player plays it for the first time. Suffice it to say, Episode 1 will be one house's rise to power, episode 2 will be the other house's rise to power, and episode 3 will allow the player to play as either a thief or an assassin who affects the balance of power between the two houses. Ideally, you will play both, and will thus be able to see two different outcomes for the entire Series. So that's it for now...stay tuned for more details which will undoubtedly follow.

Okay, so this game is not going to be as simple as I first envisioned. Leave it to me to complicate everything.

Originally, I was going to make Episode 1 without any battles at all, just short quests you needed to go on. Then, for one of the quests, I decided that to get the body part from a monster, you should be able to fight the monster instead of just writing a message that a monster appeared, and you got the body part. So now there are going to be fixed (no random) battles. At the beginning of the game, you will go to a "hero stone" in the castle that allows you to spend points on your stats. In other words, you can customize your character the way you see fit. But I didn't really have too many other battles in mind for the game. So I figured, after having made this elaborate system of adjusting your stats, why not incorporate Series 2's idea of arena battles into this game (seeing as how I'm not sure if Series 2 will ever be finished). So that's what I'm going to do. The levelling up system will be unique as well. After each battle, you will get a set amount of "stat points," which you can then go back to the first castle and spend on your stats. After your stats go up a fixed amount, you will level up, giving you more HP and MP (but not stat increases; those you will raise directly through the "stat points") and your choice of a variety of skills/spells. In this manner, I'm allowing you to customize your character however you want.

As of right now, the main character will be the only one in the party, and in the arenas will have one on one or one on two battles. As for the flow of the game, as of right now, you will need to talk to all the town mayors (probably 4 or 5 towns) to get them to go along with you. Before each mayor agrees, though, you will have to do something for him. One of these mayors wants you to prove your worth at the arenas, thus setting up the arena battling. As you are fighting at the arenas and fulfilling the other mayors' quests, you will also need to recruit members for a thieves' guild, and most of these potential members will have quests for you as well.

So something simple once again turns into something complicated. This is how the mind of Perversion works. Start out with something simple and easy, and through all of my thinking, turn it into a really complicated, labor-intensive game. Well, at least it'll probably turn out to be more interesting than my initial idea with no battles at all...


EDIT: The following was posted a few days after the first part of this post at the Pavilion, and I wanted the update here at the mag...so here it is....

I worked on this for a few hours last night. Although some of you might not want to hear this, there is one area with a quest inside of a quest inside of a quest, meaning in order to get the first mayor to go along with your plan, you need to fulfill a quest. Part of that quest involves another quest giver, and in order to fulfill all the requirements of her quest, you will need to talk to someone else, who gives you another quest. This game apparently is going to be loaded with quests, as each mayor will require you to do something for them, as will every potential member of the thieves' guild.

If I've not mentioned it already (which, by scrolling down and seeing my previous comments, I can see that I have not), there is one place in the game right toward the beginning that will have an (almost) identical storyteller for both episodes 1 and 2. In fact, I think that the easiest way to have some continuity between all three games is to start out with the same save file for all three games, and just delete that which I do not need. That way, I can be sure that things are in the right place in the towns, and I can just adjust the aforementioned storyteller to episode 2 instead of writing the whole thing down on a piece of paper and then retyping it in again. So far, I've set up two places where battles happen (once again, not random), and outlined a good portion of the quests that need to occur in the first town. There will even be a few puzzles (albeit of the trial-and-error variety) that go along with the gathering of items that you need to accomplish for one of the quests. I hope to work some more on this tomorrow, as I finally have a day off of work. Ideally, the first town and all its associated quests will be done being programmed in either by tomorrow or early next week.

Programming the quests will not be the hard part. Balancing the arena battles I think will be the labor-intensive part, as I have no clue how the player will build up his character. Let's say a character builds his character by focusing on STR and DEF. I want to make sure that every battle is winnable, but not too easy, so I will also have to playtest the same battle with a character that is focused on magic, with the same thought (not too easy but winnable), as well as a character with all the stats fairly equal. I can already see this as being a massive headache, which is part of the reason I gave up on Series 2. That game was supposed to contain 40 arena battles. In Series 4, there will most likely be 20 or 24 (4 for each town, with 4 or 5 towns where you need to talk to the mayors, and the starting town) arena battles, which, to me, sounds like not enough given the elaborate system of gaining levels that I've incorporated. But I do not think I can come up with quests for more mayors than 4 or 5. I could make 6-10 towns, but I'm not sure what I would use for all those quests. As it stands, I'm not sure what the quests are going to be for two of the towns (assuming there are 5 of them). Three of the mayors' quests are already worked out (the first town, as described above, a mayor who wants you to participate in the arena battles, and another one which I'm not going to discuss fully right now. Let's just say that it contains one of the events that crosses over between episode 1 and 2-a quest in episode 2 results in something happening in episode 1, and your reaction to this action will manifest itself in episode 2).

That's the update for now. Thanks to everyone who is keeping up with my progress and for your continued support.

I'm sorry...I'm not keeping up my updates here at the mag for my game projects. I've released a "teaser" for Episode 1 at the mag, and am still working on Episode 1 proper. As I've posted elsewhere, I expect Episode 1 to be completed and released in April/May of this year, with Episode 2 to be done before the end of the year. That leaves next year for Episode 3 and Episode Zero. Anyway, here's the latest update that was originally posted at the Pav....


I've kind of hit a brick wall creatively with this game. If I continue to work on it as I have been, it'll just be a bunch of unrelated quests (albeit with some that tie into the next game in the series). So I'm trying to come up with a better motivation for the main character, and flesh his backstory out a bit. As it is right now, the main character of the first game is kinda a cardboard cutout. Watching seasons 1 and 2 of Lost and season 5 of 24 recently on DVD really inspired me to try to develop my character a bit more than he is. And unfortunately, as I mentioned already, I'm coming up with writer's block on this. I'm going to try to come up with something next week that might serve to hold a player's interest a bit more.

Also, I'm still toying with the idea of making the game have a "commentary track," but this is still pretty nebulous. I just wanted to give everyone who cares about the status of this project a heads-up with what's going on.