Still not got around to finishing the path creation, managed to get some mild cleaning up done and some extra work I'd missed on the character stats/damage calculations.
I also implemented the team collections and once the path creation is done then that should be most of the core functionality out of the way.
apparently i haven't been sleeping enough because i went for a nap around 7pm last night and didn't get up until 9am this morning so at least I'm well rested.
In light of the lack of coding done I'm going to go over some of the end game ideas both for this prototype and for the project as a whole.
Prototype:
This prototype is mainly to get something for me to use as a base onto which i can build and rebuild my originally designed modules.
It's essentially a very cut down version of what i had planned but hopefully by doing this i can get the unity integration niggles and maybe some design flaws out of the way.
(a similar list has been posted in a previous entry so you can skip over this if you like)
In the prototype i plan to have the following things
- Map Loading from XML
- Single level tiles
- Simple animations for characters
- Path creation from one point to another
- Ability to attack enemy characters
- Teams
- Simple Enemy AI
- Skills
There's probably a few things I'm missing from that list as well but that's the general gist.
Looking at the list above makes it seem like a standard TRPG copy however i have an few ideas on how to make it stand out.
In the finished product I'd like some more standard TRPG element such as:
- Item/Inventory
- Weapons
- Jobs
- Skill Trees
- Scene scripting (for story)
- Quests
Most of which i already have designs for, I'm also going to be adding some extra features which I'm going to be going into a bit more depth about.
- Large Multiplayer Instances
When playing a single player TRPG you don't usually see huge maps, i imagine because it would make the turns much longer and less people have the patience to invest in something that long.
As such while there are optional large maps in the single player, there will be a multiplayer component where large maps will be commonplace.
I plan to include a few different modes of play and I'll go over a couple here.
"Standard" will just be run of the mill 1v1, you have a set amount of points that you can spend on equipment during set up and then you go at it against another player.
"War" will consists of Its own sub modes but the overall premise is a very large map with multiple teams fighting each other, this gets more interesting when you add the fact that you can play in groups of teams in what i call team-team death match.
You can have a group of say 4 teams per side that work together to bring down the other group of teams. You can spec out your particular team to perform a certain role, such as snipers, demolitions, foot soldiers, medics, spy's etc.
You will also get bonuses for specializing.
There also some much more exciting "War" modes but they are only formulate at the moment and trying to explain them would only confuse me but I'm leaning toward adding RTS features such as supply lines and outposts and bases.
Another key feature is persistent games, there will be either a server client(for end users to create their own server) or I'll push it to some cloud infrastructure and make it centralized. This will enable you to play games over a period of time, so if you do have a huge map and a game is taking too long you can take a break and come back(perhaps with some sort of notification when It's your turn)
Another feature I'm looking at is cross platform play, as TRPG's are turn based i hope to be able to provide a client for the game to multiple platforms so they can play together.
For instance say i set up a game from my PC, i create a server so i can play with my friends, some on pc some on mac. Not necessarily groundbreaking stuff but It's much more accessible, however I'm playing a long game so i install the notifier for my android phone. I'm out and about and i get the notification that It's now my go...Ii have to wait to get back home before i can play....or do i.
well...that was little overdramatic but what i was getting at was that unity provides the ability to build for multiple platforms so i can port the game over to different platforms from the same code base and allow you to play from your mobile devices(provided i tone down the graphics etc).
This is one of the reasons i am trying to make the pipeline for all assets as extensible as possible, so i can swap out models for low ploy ones, or change them completely with minimal effort.
The extra effort required to do this will hopefully pay off when i can create whole new levels and worlds with minimal code.
Back to work then, have to make those promised video's or people will think I'm slacking.
