Designing a Video Game... Part 1: Genre, Setting, and Major characters

I personally prefer having more than one protagonist myself or an ensemble. Loners are hard to work with.

Alternatively we could have different main protagonists to choose form.

Yeah, like maybe a Badass Grandpa!

edited 9th Sep '10 4:42:47 PM by AwesomeZombie22

^^ Uhm, I'd say it depends on the game mechanics. Action rpgs and parties don't mesh too well in my experience since it's incredibly difficult to develop a decent AI for your non-controlled companions. As for different protagonists to choose for, it's my second favorite option immediately after the never-gets-old character generation.

I'm pretty sure he means you pick your character at the beginning.

I meant both actually. I just prefer the the type of story with ensembles, however I can accept option two of just "Choose your own protagonist"

You could always do the Lunar Knights way. Pressing a certain button will cause your current Protag to jump off the screen and the next one to switch in. Perhaps with voice clip.

That's perfect actually! Thanks, Deathonabun.

Always happy to help.

Mh, I am still unsure on what the gameplay of this game is supposed to be, but I guess that, since it has a sort of african theme, and since you proposed to switch the characters mid-way, a way to do that could be to make the protagonist a generic shaman chosen one and make the different characters, different heroes/spirit that he/she can channel through his/her body.

Just a suggestion though, I really should do a little bit of research for the setting.

How could the main character acquire these spirits? I have an idea. They could be spirits "tethered" to a certain object by a shaman a long time ago, and you have to do some sort of quest like thing (ie. bring a MacGuffin, or complete a puzzle, or a riddle, etc.) to free them. In gratitude, they join and help you in your quest.

edited 12th Sep '10 12:32:22 PM by Xeuorux

How about this, the spirits were corrupted by the antagonist and the hero must travel to special areas (temples, shrines, etc.) to purify them and restore them to their original forms. The corrupted forms of the spirits are horrible beasts with awesome powers that protagonist has to defeat in order to purify them. After the protagonist purifies them, they thank the protagonist and allows her to use their power to aid her during her quest.

What do you think, is it a good idea or not?

Awesome...

Now then, gameplay. Perhaps, you have 'towns' which serve as the games hub areas. From their you can talk to villagers, purchase items, modify your equipment etc and aquire missions, similar to Monster Hunter. Having gained a mission, you can then head to the town gate and select an area (ideally the one which your current mission/quest takes place in) and then just select it from a menu...?

And then in those areas you can run/jump/swing/grab/find items/beat the crap out of monsters etc...? All while trying to solve a puzzle/riddle, defeat a particular monster or villain (as a boss...?) or find a certain number of items/artifacts?

Everyone agree this sounds good...? Cause if it does, I think we can move on to Part 2: Gameplay (detailed).

edited 13th Sep '10 12:59:09 PM by E.H.Grayson

I am not familiar with Monster Hunter but it does sound vaguely similar to the Alpha Protocol hub structure. I don't really have an opinion on that, to be honest. For pacing reasons I wouldn't keep the mission structure too arcade-ish and game-y but meh, as long as the execution is good, it can work either way. It's not like we have to deal with engine limitations and such.

IMO, everything except for the missions sounds like a good idea. I believe the if you make the missions mandatory to completing the quest then it'd just make it seem like unnecessary padding to the game.

If you're going to add missions then this is what I believe you should do, the missions should be elective so that it doesn't slow down the game-play or the completion of the main quest (restoring deities and the like...if you're still doing this way of course). A good example of this is the jobs/mini-games from No more heroes, the first game made the jobs required in order to get to the next stage of the game which slowed down the game-play and detracted some of the focus from the main game (beating the next ranked fight). When they made the jobs skippable, it made the games more fun because they weren't an obstacle that got in the way of the game but rather a fun way for players to earn extra cash in the game.

The best way to handle the missions is to add additional missions in each town after the player has restored another village deity. The missions should also vary depending where the village is (for instance, a fishing job in a village near a lake or hunting for a village in the savanna of Africa) and the amount of money the jobs will pay should vary depending on the how well the player did during the jobs.

Well that's basically all I have to say on this subject. If you decide to add a job to the game, I hope my advice will help you.

Thanks for reading and have a nice day.

-Flyingdingo0827

P.S. Good Luck.

edited 13th Sep '10 1:35:00 PM by flyingdingo0827

Funny, another project required me to do extensive research on African legends/ myths, and now I know a lot...

Well anyway if you need some info on that I can contribute, or if you type in "African gods" into a search engine you should come to a site with over 200 of them, the logo should be the vomiting god who made the world... anyway, from what has been said I like the mythical premise, but I do think there will be a problem keeping everything straight considering that most of the myths work off grab-bag cultures.

And about the story, while the classic village angle sounds nice, how about a more modern approach?

In my mind I've always had an idea for an African story, the main character starts off in his small village, as they struggle in their day-to-day lives the main character goes to a small relief school with the rest of the children, they don't learn much but they learn. Here is where the story starts as the lead encounters something he hasn't seen before. Technology. I was thinking a cell phone or something, seeing the advanced technology stirs him to find the world, to help that small dusty village. Then the game goes forward as we see him foray into the larger cities of N.Africa trying to work his way into the modern world to help give back to his community.

The enemies could be the modern warring factions of today's Africa and the various criminals who ramble about, I think it might be a good way to include some greater underlying themes without being too heavy handed. I think combat could be pretty flexible in how we could do it, one idea I had was to try and avoid Guns Are Useless without overpowering them over melee, namely in that you have to BUY ammunition, and being a small uneducated miscreant coming in from the savanna money is hard to come by, so while that pistol is going to fell most enemies pretty fast, it's not going mean jack when you can't fire it, and a turn or some fraction of time should be devoted to reloads as well to prevent One Bullet Clip. Also about the quests, a good way to balance those out would be like the previously mentioned No More Heroes system, or here it would be doing odd jobs for some temp service or something.

Also the older high-fantasy setting might work pretty well as well, namely I like the channeling spirits aspect, a core mechanic could be the switching of forms similar to games like Megaman ZX.

I personally would like it if all the spirits weren't necessarily happy to be tethered to your body. Some of them would be kinda grumpy when they talk, and some would be outright antagonistic. Though the more noble ones would be happy to lend a hand, the more sociopathic ones would be a bit more dickish...and the overly violent one would be just a bit too happy to kill things again.

And would there be any way we could combine the two plots? Perhaps the old shaman could be long dead, and a ghost who posseses the main character in modern day Africa. You gain access to the shaman's various spirits as you complete flashback missions related to said spirits. Or something. A sort of Two Lines, No Waiting.

edited 27th Sep '10 10:41:34 PM by Deathonabun

^ I like the idea of combining the two plots, but tinkering the mechanics would be extremely difficult. It would also be an extremely interesting playground though.. hurm...well, why not?

Ooh, nice idea. A serious one.

My question is...Does anyone know what a VG design document looks like?