[community project] RPG - Story discussion

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[community project] RPG - Story discussion

Postby Sorunome » Tue Jun 28, 2016 2:09 pm

Main Thread
This thread is about the discussion of the story for the community RPG, beware, spoilers ahead!

Currently superfreaky is working on the story, however everybody is welcome to suggest stuff.

Here's the cross-post of superfreaky's current stuff:

superfreaky wrote:WARNING! THIS POST CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS! IF YOU'VE BEEN WATCHING THIS THREAD BUT DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED, SKIP IT!

If you're part of the team, you have to read. Sorry!

The name of the game is Hero.

Character list: this character list will sketch the characters out not only for how they should look (so the sprite designers have an outline) but also a bit of personality to help me with the plot when I write it.

Markos: The main character. He is a mechanical genius, which will affect the gameplay, but he's also a master swordsman. He is always willing to help people out. He has spiky hair, if that can be put into the sprite. His sword, for most of the game, is really wide and somewhat short. It gets upgraded if you unlock things from one-time minigames, like the powerups in Super Mario Bros. 3, if that's possible to do. The upgrades do not affect the appearance. Not like it would be possible, with such limited resolution, but, well, might as well note that down.

Myra: Markos' girlfriend. She has been captured by the enemy you fight, because he likes her. Only a hero can get her back! (What were you expecting would happen with the love interest? I'm not an original person! Save the girl works for me.)

Lord Garmadon: Obviously the badguy. He got his position of power through the might of his sword. The sword has a strong vein of dark energy, and was forged by elves from the Dark Regions (more about this later). It has not only given him the strength of ten men, but protects him in battle, and has prolonged his life for several centuries. He takes women that catch his eye and adds them to his harem. Shoulder length hair, and I dunno, some lame cape.

That's all the important people to the plot, believe it or not. The rest are just side characters, any old design will do. They're just there so you have something to interact with. Some are at least a little bit important, because they help you in different ways, but no description is necessary.


So here comes the basic plot. Oh boy...

Opening scene, where Markos and Myra are taking a walk in the park. No dialogue yet. Suddenly a huge spike thing punches through the ground next to them, with someone sitting on it. He grabs Myra and the spike falls away into the ground again. Markos: “Myra!” Garmadon (from under the ground): “Mwa ha ha! You will never see your precious Myra again! I'm taking her as the prize of my harem, the chief concubine. Don't worry, she probably wanted to break up with a little wimp like you anyway. Hahahahahahaha!” A flash comes from the hole in the ground, and he's gone. Markos: “I don't have much time to save her. It's a long walk to Lord Garmadon's palace, but I can't just teleport... I'll have to head into town and see if anyone can help me.” He walks off screen. The next place is on the edge of a town. STAGE 1: (insert stage name here, map designer.[and by the way you have freedom in the next part. Just follow the outline I'm giving.]) You are in a village on market day. There are little sale booths everywhere in the center of the town, stage designer picks what they all have. There only needs to be a few minor upgrades, and you have to pick one. An extra heart, a minor healing potion, a better knife – which is what you start with – you get the gist. People everywhere throughout the outer edges of the town, who have an exclamation point over their head, who ask you little favors. I mean like finding something of theirs or getting them an icecream cone. You get the gist. When you recover the item, you only need to talk to them again, and then you pick something up in your inventory at random. It might be something important, but it might just enable you to get a different favor out of the way, in a chain, leading up to something more important. I think you should be able to pick and choose whether you want to put the effort into a hard favor, or blow through quickly. How fast you go through the game will affect your score, and percentage of completion. My vision is that, even if you don't complete everything in a level, you can always go back later on in the game, which will indeed be necessary if you want to complete everything at all possible. See, I have planned already a zipline crossbow gadget you get, and other things in the works later on, which I will mention as necessary, but the zipline thing is what you get in the first level. You need it to go to the next one. I want a separate map area you go in when you walk out of the exit to a level, but not like Super Mario Bros style. What I'm thinking is a sort of out-of-scale map you need to interact with to advance, rather that the set pathways of the aforementioned famous game. From the first level, zipline across a cliff (or whatever the map designer thinks is best – have complete freedom in designing the puzzles!) You get what I mean, right? If you are unclear, let me know and I'll expand.

Another concept is one using some kind of magic jewel, which in combination with some supplies (Collected through favors) allows you to cross dimensions to reach previously unreachable places. Let me explain. When you stand on areas of black and white criss-cross (Let me know if you're confused about what I mean by that) you can use your jewel-thing-with-no-name-yet to “Cross dimensions” meaning black now = white and white = black. You can go through white and not black, you're just inverting the place you can go. This can open up a whole new world, if it's properly designed. I think to help along the effect that you're in an unstable, non-natural place, the backlight could be flashing and the view shaking, like when you're down to your last life in Crabator. You dig? I think it's a pretty fantastic idea.

Well, my next update will have lots of actual story, but for now, I just wanted to throw some ideas out there, and give the map designer something to design, you know?
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Re: [community project] RPG - Story discussion

Postby Sorunome » Tue Jun 28, 2016 2:44 pm

Here are my thoughts:

  • Name is kinda.....generic?
  • Garmadon doesn't seem to have a real motive, what's so special about Myra to justify to kidnap her?
  • "but I can't just teleport" --> why?
  • what do you plean on stages being? I thougth we wanted to do something where you don't have to perform anything in a certain order, so that everything is up to you and stuff is non-linear?
  • What do you mean with how you want the overworld map?

That's all i can think of right now, maybe more will come
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Re: [community project] RPG - Story discussion

Postby superfreaky » Tue Jun 28, 2016 4:24 pm

You're right, the plot was kinda weak-ass. Legend of the Blade again? It just sounds like a lot of rpg's end up having a legend of something title.

Ok, since there was no point before, here's why Garmadon took Myra. Once, he and Markos were best friends. Then Markos stole Garmadon's girlfriend, Myra. As a consequence of that, Garmadon found the dark energy blade, allowing him to rule the land with fear of him. He decided to get revenge on Markos and Myra, so he rode his dragon, tamed using the blade's power, until he found them, where he gives a revenge spiel I will write later, which explains their past, and then takes Myra to be slowly boiled in a vat of oil, or at least that's what he told Markos. He really just wants to see Markos try before he ultimately fails and dies knowing it. The point of that bad thing Markos does is to show that there is aome bad in everyone, even the main character.

I think the dragon nicely explains why Markos can't just follow.

Three different ways in and out of a level map. You can pick which favors to complete to get out. Once you exit a level, the "level select map" map is interactive and free roam. By free roam, there are a number of levels you can select from there. By interactive, I mean it works like any other map except one thing. It's out of scale, meaning you are really big compared to everything else, or its really small compared to you. The reason being, you can pick levels without walking a realistic time and distance, which would just be tedious. Get it now?
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Re: [community project] RPG - Story discussion

Postby Quirby64 » Tue Jun 28, 2016 5:57 pm

Honestly I prefer Legend Of The Blade, I did some google searched and found about ~5-10 games (NOT movies/ect) that Start with "Legend Of". You're fine mate :)
I think the game shouldn't be Stage-based like what you're trying to go for. I think an open world would better fit the story.
Unrelated, but all I can imagine in a modern-day park when you say they're walking it the park sounds stupid compared to the setting but that's what I thought. :D
EDIT : The black->white switching also seems like a great idea, maybe make some parts hidden that you have to use it for to find them?
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Re: [community project] RPG - Story discussion

Postby superfreaky » Tue Jun 28, 2016 6:40 pm

Quirby64 wrote:Honestly I prefer Legend Of The Blade, I did some google searched and found about ~5-10 games (NOT movies/ect) that Start with "Legend Of". You're fine mate :)
I think the game shouldn't be Stage-based like what you're trying to go for. I think an open world would better fit the story.
Unrelated, but all I can imagine in a modern-day park when you say they're walking it the park sounds stupid compared to the setting but that's what I thought. :D
EDIT : The black->white switching also seems like a great idea, maybe make some parts hidden that you have to use it for to find them?


You're right. Now that I think about it, a completely open world would make things flow smoothly. It would also make a completely non-linear story much easier. There just needs to be puzzles you need to backtrack to complete, but aren't really necessary to complete the game, just improve the score and give and you items to make any battles easy?

What you said about the switching is exactly what I had in mind. I think little secrets that give you better equipment but arent 100% necessary, just making things a little easier, seems like a good reason to replay the game. At least that's what I want to do in games like this. I'm always looking for 100% completion level myself.

I'm with you
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Re: [community project] RPG - Story discussion

Postby Duhjoker » Sat Jul 02, 2016 5:23 am

Prolly a stupid question but has any one played the first dragon warrior for NES. It had a large free access map with a few dungeons but the game itself was a puzzle in what you had to do in what order to defeat the dragon lord.

Maybe you could have a character that gives the hero a hint about something on the map using each square of land as coordinate in north south east west. So say the object was 140 south by 30 west of the starting point. Hero would travel 140 squares south and 30 squares west. Would be handy to have a search button too so you can search the over world squares for other hidden items.
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Re: [community project] RPG - Story discussion

Postby Sorunome » Sun Jul 10, 2016 12:32 pm

So where are we at, story-wise?
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Re: [community project] RPG - Story discussion

Postby superfreaky » Wed Jul 13, 2016 4:49 am

Still making one that will be half-decent, I have the basic storyline but I need to make convincing specific dialogue. The general plot is,
1) Two people, once friends, now enemies, the badguy does something that requires the goodguy to go fight him (I have a much more specific thing in mind, but I'm keeping that to myself until it's more solidified.) The badguy, unbeknownst to the goodguy, has a legendary sword that gives him almost god status in terms of fighting power. After a bit of a "boss-fight" (though keep in mind there is a good bit of gameplay in order to get to this point, it's all up to the map-designer however) the goodguy gets defeated and is blown away to a neighboring land by the power of the final swordstroke (a separate map, despite what people have said about the whole open world thing -- I do agree with that, but this land needs to be separate from the other for the plot, and due to fresh challenges eventually appearing in the original map, which will have to change), where he wakes up from a coma to find himself with a race of friendly, if different looking, people who ask him about what happened, after telling him he has been taken care of in his coma for a few weeks now. When they hear what's up, they tell you that they are the race who designed the sword. They did this in an experimental use of dark matter obtained using transdimensional crystals (when you are given one, you can use the checkered ground-pieces I talked about earlier.) They inform you that if you collect enough special dark energy to put in the steel of a new blade, in combination with a relic crystal they own which has a magic spell cast on it by fairies, it could defeat the wielder of the original blade. Naturally, you need to solve mini-puzzles to acquire all 30 of the dark energy crystals, then take a ship back to the kingdom you came from. At which point, you find all the land in chaos, with enemy guards all over the place terrorizing the townsfolk, and lots of burned-down huts and stuff. After working your way through the mess, fighting off enemy guards and just finding your way through the non-linear pathway/maze that the whole country has become, back to the badguy's fortress. Then a separate, smaller final map to get through all the inside of the fortress to the badguy (who fought you the last time in a courtyard at the front of the fortress) At that point, you, well, fight him to the death.

How does that sound? I'm coughing up proper dialogue as we speak.

Note: Since the map-designer is deciding all the puzzles and where people are, it only seems fair that he come up with the things they say or give.
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Re: [community project] RPG - Story discussion

Postby superfreaky » Wed Jul 13, 2016 4:54 am

Duhjoker wrote:Prolly a stupid question but has any one played the first dragon warrior for NES. It had a large free access map with a few dungeons but the game itself was a puzzle in what you had to do in what order to defeat the dragon lord.

Maybe you could have a character that gives the hero a hint about something on the map using each square of land as coordinate in north south east west. So say the object was 140 south by 30 west of the starting point. Hero would travel 140 squares south and 30 squares west. Would be handy to have a search button too so you can search the over world squares for other hidden items.


Unfortunately I've never played it, probably because the NES is a large number of years older than me... :( But if it makes me cooler, I own SMB3 from the Nintendo Virtual Console, and I think it's the best platformer in the entire history of videogames.


But I thing a "Hint Character" would be nice, if a little cliche.
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Re: [community project] RPG - Story discussion

Postby superfreaky » Sun Sep 04, 2016 5:32 am

Everyone needs to read this if you're involved in development. Map designer, you can get started based on the info in here.

Here's the current timeline/story.
1) Two friends exploring together find a sword stabbed into the first floor. When one picks it up, a wave of power blows out from him as he touches it (shower of pixels in all directions) he blew his friend away off screen. They comment on how weird it is, but nothing happens. Narration cuts in, telling how over a period of months, during which the one friend had the sword with him all the time, it becomes apparent that he has changed ( Lord of the Rings, I know) and is much more irritable and Prone to desire more power and authority. They are friends no more, hardly speaking to reach other. And then one day...
2) First chapter. The evil friend is laying siege (single handedly) to a castle, using his sword of extraordinary power. As he is taking over, the good friend is trying to stop him. The people in his own village advised against it in a council, even warning him that guards will detain him if he attempted to leave, because they are afraid that he might invoke the anger of the now powerful warrior against their village. He has to find items and a way around the guards. (Smoke bomb, distraction? That I will leave to the map designer, as well as any items you need to collect and the puzzles to get them because I don't know what the map is like. All I know is that it's along the coast, which starts at the bottom and makes the left border of the map. Bottom left is the hero's home village. Above which, several different paths you can choose intermingling through different stops. A different kind of advisor in each village (randomly distributed) will advise you to focus on different strengths, which you can purchase gems for in the center of each village/town. But wherever you stop first is a wizard who explains how the evil man was corrupted, and gives you a sword he claims can defeat the evil dude (anyone got a badass fantasy name?) You may choose to upgrade the sword itself with gems, or character attributes rather than sword. (I'll discuss those more later) this upgrade process is important for later. So, yeah, I'm giving pretty much free rein, just first town at bottom left and castle somewhere at the top. Make several optional paths that may intersect but lead differently between five or six towns and places. I have no imagination on this area, so feel free to build from the ground up.) There, back out of parenthesis. So anyway, when he finally gets up to the"boss battle," he is automatically defeated (as in, the baddie is invincible in this fight) and when the hero dies, his body collapses as he drops his sword, then his incredibly heroic spirit leaves his body... and enters the sword (oh by the way if it wasn't obvious before the sword of the bad friend has the spirit of an evil warrior inside.) The sword explodes after a second into a shower of pixels.
3) Now in map #2. A pedestal. Pixels appear at the edge of the screen and converge in the middle, forming on the pedestal in, you guessed it, a sword. Or rather, the sword.
This map is a puny island with a grand total of one village, a small forest, and a cave (a mini-map in the map, if you would. Plus a volcano mountain.)

Ok it's late and I'm going to bed but the rest of this post will continue tomorrow I hope.
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