Hiya,
i'm about to begin work on a game design i've had for a while, not really a genre in itself but rather a mix of princess maker, pokemon, black and white and harvest moon.
You start off with a basic monster, you dont get many to pick from - the idea is they change depending on how you treat them, so you get a 'blob' sorta thing which will eventually though training end up just how you want it.
you get them training, you take them for walks/adventures, you put them in sparing fights etc.. you dont have direct control over the little fella, but you can scold him when he does something rubbish, and praise him when he does something well.. and its thru the praise system that he learns what you want him to do and eventually will always act how you want him to.
this extends to the fighting style too, so if you want a ranger fighter - you'd scold him for doing physical attacks and praise him if he chucks something, once you've earnt money you could buy him a proper projectile weapon and eventually you'd have yourself a cool sniper character
the artwork side will be difficult, so i've decided that while yo uget some default monsters - you can also draw your own. and while it's 2D, it wont need animation. each limb will be a seperate graphic, and along with some sort of hybrid 2D skeleton animation system it'll move without needing to be animated (if that makes sense)
it'll have joints etc and the assets will be moved and rotated in real-time to make it look like its moving.
I call them monsters, but so long as they have two legs and two arms it can be whatever you want - a bird, a ninja, a robot etc.
When your not raising it to the the ultimate killing machine, you also have to raise money and maintain your monster ranch, you put your monster in battles and place bets, which in return allow you to buy items, pay for better training and improve the facilitys in your ranch.
you can share your monsters by exporting them to a file which a friend can then import, this will allow you to battle friends etc.
Also you can have team battles, so if you are raising 3 monsters - you can make them do a 3 on 3 battle against somebody else's 3 monsters.
i'll make it so you get different class's of battle, and your monster must complete some sort of 'exam' before being allowed in that class, in the starting class's your monster cannot die, only get KO'd. but in the later class of battles your monster can die and you lose it.. but then again you make more money if you win.
the main attraction i suppose will be the petting side, i'll try to get the AI as cool as possible so its not just a tamagotchi which is either hungry or playfull.. your pet will sorta get a personality of its own.. if your nasty to it it'll become evil, if your too nice to it it'll run away and be a coward in fights etc.
any ideas/suggestions welcome - want to get the design finalised before i start coding, otherwise i'll just go back and have to rewrite bits later on which wastes time (as i've discovered with gigas).
i'm about to begin work on a game design i've had for a while, not really a genre in itself but rather a mix of princess maker, pokemon, black and white and harvest moon.
You start off with a basic monster, you dont get many to pick from - the idea is they change depending on how you treat them, so you get a 'blob' sorta thing which will eventually though training end up just how you want it.
you get them training, you take them for walks/adventures, you put them in sparing fights etc.. you dont have direct control over the little fella, but you can scold him when he does something rubbish, and praise him when he does something well.. and its thru the praise system that he learns what you want him to do and eventually will always act how you want him to.
this extends to the fighting style too, so if you want a ranger fighter - you'd scold him for doing physical attacks and praise him if he chucks something, once you've earnt money you could buy him a proper projectile weapon and eventually you'd have yourself a cool sniper character
the artwork side will be difficult, so i've decided that while yo uget some default monsters - you can also draw your own. and while it's 2D, it wont need animation. each limb will be a seperate graphic, and along with some sort of hybrid 2D skeleton animation system it'll move without needing to be animated (if that makes sense)
it'll have joints etc and the assets will be moved and rotated in real-time to make it look like its moving.
I call them monsters, but so long as they have two legs and two arms it can be whatever you want - a bird, a ninja, a robot etc.
When your not raising it to the the ultimate killing machine, you also have to raise money and maintain your monster ranch, you put your monster in battles and place bets, which in return allow you to buy items, pay for better training and improve the facilitys in your ranch.
you can share your monsters by exporting them to a file which a friend can then import, this will allow you to battle friends etc.
Also you can have team battles, so if you are raising 3 monsters - you can make them do a 3 on 3 battle against somebody else's 3 monsters.
i'll make it so you get different class's of battle, and your monster must complete some sort of 'exam' before being allowed in that class, in the starting class's your monster cannot die, only get KO'd. but in the later class of battles your monster can die and you lose it.. but then again you make more money if you win.
the main attraction i suppose will be the petting side, i'll try to get the AI as cool as possible so its not just a tamagotchi which is either hungry or playfull.. your pet will sorta get a personality of its own.. if your nasty to it it'll become evil, if your too nice to it it'll run away and be a coward in fights etc.
any ideas/suggestions welcome - want to get the design finalised before i start coding, otherwise i'll just go back and have to rewrite bits later on which wastes time (as i've discovered with gigas).
