Pandora 'pokemon' Style Game For Pandora?

[bananajamslam]

And some people just really hate MMORPGs. I wouldn't mind having it as an option, but I would never use it, and it would make the game useless while away from the house.

Make a solid single-player game and add a MMORPG version later.

I completely agree, this was what I was trying to say earlier.

Just a silly idea, but how about making the battles like in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance? You start with just your trainer in the field, and use summon/throw pokeball/whatever to get your creatures to desired locations. The trainer would not fight, but would be needed for administrative stuff, like escaping (creatures left behind would actuallu be left behind, maybe even captured by the enemy) and managing the creatures. The enemies of course could not attack your trainer, that would be cheap . Also in regard to the wait-bar (the progress bar that must fill before you can choose your action), I'd think a HOMM-style approach might be better, where the speed of the character (creature) determines how often it gets turns. A creature with X speed would get one turn in the time a creature with 2*X speed would get two. Coupled with the FFTA battle field mechanics this would really give a nice edge for quicker creatures.

I don't know, it's not my game, but if I were to do it, this would probably be my starting point

EDIT: Of course, this would be a heck of a more work

This is an interesting idea but it might pull away from the main idea of this game too much and I am not sure if everyone would appreciate it. It would definitely be worth looking into a bit more. (Maybe another poll to see who's interested) I think that the best idea might be to add this as a sort of secondary element to the game like what the contests in pokemon did. Personally I hate the contests, I think they're terrible, but I think this would be a very interesting way to go about making a secondary element. After all the number one thing that I would like to have included would be alternate ways to complete the game (as stated before).

 

[midna25]

How about this: "Pocket Monsters"?

 

[Sly]

For my second suggestion here is a video you can skip to about 3:00 that is where it starts. My link

You will have to notice a few things. There is a limit and a time bar. My suggestion is to just keep the time bar to increase simplicity. Notice how it slowly fills up and then a box appears asking what the character wants to do. I suggest that we have the same options pop up here that are in pokemon (RUN, ATTACK, ITEMS, POKEMON). The major difference would be that characters bars fill up faster than others, thus the get to attack more often. It also makes knowing when the opponent is going to attack a mystery but this could be solved by showing the opponents bar if we wanted the players to know.

Just a silly idea, but how about making the battles like in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance? You start with just your trainer in the field, and use summon/throw pokeball/whatever to get your creatures to desired locations. The trainer would not fight, but would be needed for administrative stuff, like escaping (creatures left behind would actuallu be left behind, maybe even captured by the enemy) and managing the creatures. The enemies of course could not attack your trainer, that would be cheap . Also in regard to the wait-bar (the progress bar that must fill before you can choose your action), I'd think a HOMM-style approach might be better, where the speed of the character (creature) determines how often it gets turns. A creature with X speed would get one turn in the time a creature with 2*X speed would get two. Coupled with the FFTA battle field mechanics this would really give a nice edge for quicker creatures.

I don't know, it's not my game, but if I were to do it, this would probably be my starting point

EDIT: Of course, this would be a heck of a more work

See the idea intrigues me, but my main worry still is the complexity it adds to the game, part of me really likes the lazy aspect to the Pokemon games, e.g. I can play the game for a mind numbing amount of hours while watching tv etc. because it's all turn based and simplistic, I don't need to rush my moves nor pay 100% attention to the screen, but then a system that's partly time based would probably increase the battle intensity. I'm currently working on a more out of the box battle mode in my head but we'll see how it pans out.

dflemstr: "I'll say one thing: MMORPG." I am going to have to disagree with him here though. Not that I don't want an online component to the game at all I just think that it may be too difficult to do right away, it may have to be added later when we have more support. The second reason that I will disagree with him on this point is that it restricts people that do not have an internet connection and (more importantly) ones that have a bad internet connection. I live in rural Alberta (Canada) and have the crappiest internet of anyone I know, it is not slow, it just disconnects every 5 minutes and would make this game unplayable. In other words if everyone agreed to make this a totally MMORPG game then I would have to abandon the project completely.

As for the MMORPG, I won't be doing anything MMO styled, at least not in the traditional sense of a MMO game. Mainly because it just won't work, even with all the time in the world, the overhead of development plus running it afterward would be massive (most MMOs take 3 years with a full building of Devs on the job). I'm not sure if even running a world trading system similar to the one in Diamond and Pearl Pkmn could be achieveable with out substantial server rental costs.

And of course your right, bananajamslam, Single Player is a must, that's what makes this project perfect for the Pandora, it's a portable console yet should be easy enough to get online with time. If it was a full MMO it might aswell just be made for the PC, but only hardcore fans would play, therfore it would be a fail.

 

[foxblock]

One thing concerning the fighting gamplay:

I really liked the idea bananajamslam threw in. Once upon a time I played a PRG called "Grandia 2", it was not very popular, but in my eyes it was great and heavily underrated.
However, the FF gameplay video brought it back to my mind, because in this game you have a very similar gameplay mechanism, there is a bar with an icon for every player in your party and every enemy on it and the icons move according to the units speed (faster or slower) and once they reach a certain point you could attack and the position of the unit on the bar was reset. Some attacks made you wait longer, some put you only to the half of the bar so you could attack a 2nd time very fast.
There were some more thing about it which made it a bit more complex (but not too much, it was still easily understandable after you played some rounds), but I don't remember them anymore.
Of course this works best with more units battling at the same time whereas in Pokemon usually only 2 battle against each other, but that brings me to another point, becaue it was something which really slowed the game down in my eyes.
Having for example 2 pokemon fighting against 2 at the same time would make the game more interesting, give you more strategical choices, but on the other hand also would make the game much more complex, which you probably are not after...
I still wanted to mention it here, maybe one can build up on it or gain some ideas.

Anyway, here is the video:
.

foxblock out

PS: If you can get your hand on that game (it will only cost around 5€ nowadays), buy it if you like RPGs, you won't regret it

 

[Sly]

See a lot of interesting things going on here... As I've mentioned I'd rather it was still turned based, not so keen on the idea of reaction times etc. it just makes the game more casual I guess to go turn based

There's many things to consider in the battle style... I think what would be a more interesting idea is the possibilities of maybe a turn based combo system... consider:

It's your turn, Instead of choosing just one attack, you choose an order so you might use say... two physical attacks (could be the same move twice) and then something like a special attack... and depending on the differences of speed you might fit in more than one attack before your opponent's creature even gets in their first... It would save on the tediousness of one sided battles... and hopefully balancing out the ones with agility to the ones that are hard hitters.

Again the problems with these ideas times can be put back by one simple problem... screen size... a 4.3 inch screen with lots of detail might really screw up all these plans, epically as a lot of the stuff presented so don't like they were released for a portable console. Plus capabilities... So far unless convinced otherwise I think the battles need to really be 2D, not so much because of the difficulties of gaming system, but producing 2D creatures/battle animations will take a lot of time, 3D will take a life time with out some real pro's on the job.

 

[aundy]

I've been thinking about this game for a little while, and I have some questions/suggestions.

1.
The past few posts have talked about different kinds of battle system. From the last post it seems like the battle system will be 2d and turn based, So I was wondering, will battles be 1 on 1 like in pokemon or will they be more like dragon warrior monsters where you and your enemy could both have up to three monsters battling together? The dragon warrior monsters kind of fighting was interesting because you could have certain monsters that were healers or fighters or supporting casters etc. If you decide to have more than one creature battling at a time then I think it would be really cool if you added a combo system like in chrono trigger. So for example, if one monster knows tackle and another knows fireball, they could attack simultaneously to perform a more powerful move called fire tackle that does more damage than doing a tackle and fireball separately.

2.
How is the capturing/befriending system going to work? In pokemon you use an item to capture the pokemon, and if it is weak enough it will be captured and then you can order it around (if you have enough badges). In dragon warrior monsters you give monsters an item (meat) to befriend them, and after you've defeated them they will join you if you befriended them enough, but they might ignore orders until they become more tame. You could implement both methods with the advantage of the pokemon method being that you don't need to defeat the creature, just weaken it, and the advantage of the dragon warrior monster system being that the creature will be more likely to follow orders than if it was caught forcibly.

3.
What will the world be like? In pokemon there is one world map with different areas, but each area has all a trainer needs (pokemart to buy items and pokecenter to heal/store pokemon). In dragon warrior monsters, there is one main area that contains all the essential areas (shops, breeder, farm for storing monsters), but there are no monsters in this area, and instead you travel to different areas to catch monsters. These different areas may have shops and places to heal, but you always have to return to the main area to access the farm and the breeder. In dragon warrior monsters 2, the majority of these different areas would be randomly generated, and each would have randomly generated towns, dungeons, and bosses. I thought this was a really neat feature because after the main story was finished you could keep going into randomly generated worlds to catch new monsters.

4.
Will breeding be a big part of the game? In pokemon breeding is a not really necessary or very useful. In dragon warrior monsters, breeding is the only way to get good monsters. By breeding monsters you can control their starting stats, resistances, movesets, and species. So starting from common monsters, you can get a very powerful rare monster after several generations of careful breeding. Implementing a breeding system as complex as is dragon warrior monsters would be very hard to do, but I found it to be very fun to play.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on this game, I hope you found them interesting. Good luck with the game, I'm looking forward to playing it.

 

[dflemstr]

I've been thinking about this game for a little while, and I have some questions/suggestions.

1. ...

2. ...

3. ...

4. ...

Anyway, those are my thoughts on this game, I hope you found them interesting. Good luck with the game, I'm looking forward to playing it.

1. This could be difficult to pull off, but if there's a system similar to Chrono Trigger for combined attacks, it could work, so I +1 it.
3. The reason why I suggested to make the game a MMORPG a while ago was that static games become very boring very quickly. Randomly generated worlds would really add replay value to the game.
4. This can be very easy to pull off actually. What would be cool, too, would be to make the creatures change according to the actions they take. If anyone has played "Warning Forever", you know what I'm aiming for; basically, if a creature uses physical attacks primarily, it will tend to get more physical attacks and will "evolve" into a more physical-based creature later on. If it's defensive in battle, it won't get new offensive attacks but instead get more HP over time, etc. Then, how this could be implemented would for example be by introducing ability patterns, construct them like spiderweb diagrams, and map evolutionary paths from there. I'll provide diagrams to clarify if needed.

 

[bananajamslam]

Ok, since I have last looked at the forum many good ideas have popped up that I want to comment on

How about this: "Pocket Monsters"?

This is ridiculous, it's just asking for a lawsuit and I am not going to take it seriously...

One thing concerning the fighting gamplay:

I really liked the idea bananajamslam threw in. Once upon a time I played a PRG called "Grandia 2", it was not very popular, but in my eyes it was great and heavily underrated.
However, the FF gameplay video brought it back to my mind, because in this game you have a very similar gameplay mechanism, there is a bar with an icon for every player in your party and every enemy on it and the icons move according to the units speed (faster or slower) and once they reach a certain point you could attack and the position of the unit on the bar was reset. Some attacks made you wait longer, some put you only to the half of the bar so you could attack a 2nd time very fast.
There were some more thing about it which made it a bit more complex (but not too much, it was still easily understandable after you played some rounds), but I don't remember them anymore.
Of course this works best with more units battling at the same time whereas in Pokemon usually only 2 battle against each other, but that brings me to another point, becaue it was something which really slowed the game down in my eyes.
Having for example 2 pokemon fighting against 2 at the same time would make the game more interesting, give you more strategical choices, but on the other hand also would make the game much more complex, which you probably are not after...

PS: If you can get your hand on that game (it will only cost around 5€ nowadays), buy it if you like RPGs, you won't regret it

I really liked the double battle thing in pokemon games and I also am interested in the combo thing that you bring up, and I agree that they could make the game much more fun. I do not; however, think that single battles should be eliminated completely as the mix of the two help add a fun variety to the game to keep it from becoming mindless dribble. This is also why I proposed the time based system but I would like to talk about that more below... (By the way thanks for the game suggestion I think I'll try it)

See a lot of interesting things going on here... As I've mentioned I'd rather it was still turned based, not so keen on the idea of reaction times etc. it just makes the game more casual I guess to go turn based

There's many things to consider in the battle style... I think what would be a more interesting idea is the possibilities of maybe a turn based combo system... consider:

It's your turn, Instead of choosing just one attack, you choose an order so you might use say... two physical attacks (could be the same move twice) and then something like a special attack... and depending on the differences of speed you might fit in more than one attack before your opponent's creature even gets in their first... It would save on the tediousness of one sided battles... and hopefully balancing out the ones with agility to the ones that are hard hitters.

Again the problems with these ideas times can be put back by one simple problem... screen size... a 4.3 inch screen with lots of detail might really screw up all these plans, epically as a lot of the stuff presented so don't like they were released for a portable console. Plus capabilities... So far unless convinced otherwise I think the battles need to really be 2D, not so much because of the difficulties of gaming system, but producing 2D creatures/battle animations will take a lot of time, 3D will take a life time with out some real pro's on the job.

To be totally honest this is, by far, the best idea I have heard yet. I really like this idea as it helps to increase the intrigue of battles while maintaining their lax nature. In other words I would like to be able to select a really nice combo for the creatures that I have on screen and then, like you, turn my attention toward the TV. It's also a great way to eliminate the problem of fast characters having slim advantages. You would just have to make sure it is kept simple or this could make things much more complicated than timed events. I would not worry about screen size, their are always was to fit things on to a small screen you just have to be creative.

I've been thinking about this game for a little while, and I have some questions/suggestions.

1.
The past few posts have talked about different kinds of battle system. From the last post it seems like the battle system will be 2d and turn based, So I was wondering, will battles be 1 on 1 like in pokemon or will they be more like dragon warrior monsters where you and your enemy could both have up to three monsters battling together? The dragon warrior monsters kind of fighting was interesting because you could have certain monsters that were healers or fighters or supporting casters etc. If you decide to have more than one creature battling at a time then I think it would be really cool if you added a combo system like in chrono trigger. So for example, if one monster knows tackle and another knows fireball, they could attack simultaneously to perform a more powerful move called fire tackle that does more damage than doing a tackle and fireball separately.

2.
How is the capturing/befriending system going to work? In pokemon you use an item to capture the pokemon, and if it is weak enough it will be captured and then you can order it around (if you have enough badges). In dragon warrior monsters you give monsters an item (meat) to befriend them, and after you've defeated them they will join you if you befriended them enough, but they might ignore orders until they become more tame. You could implement both methods with the advantage of the pokemon method being that you don't need to defeat the creature, just weaken it, and the advantage of the dragon warrior monster system being that the creature will be more likely to follow orders than if it was caught forcibly.

3.
What will the world be like? In pokemon there is one world map with different areas, but each area has all a trainer needs (pokemart to buy items and pokecenter to heal/store pokemon). In dragon warrior monsters, there is one main area that contains all the essential areas (shops, breeder, farm for storing monsters), but there are no monsters in this area, and instead you travel to different areas to catch monsters. These different areas may have shops and places to heal, but you always have to return to the main area to access the farm and the breeder. In dragon warrior monsters 2, the majority of these different areas would be randomly generated, and each would have randomly generated towns, dungeons, and bosses. I thought this was a really neat feature because after the main story was finished you could keep going into randomly generated worlds to catch new monsters.

4.
Will breeding be a big part of the game? In pokemon breeding is a not really necessary or very useful. In dragon warrior monsters, breeding is the only way to get good monsters. By breeding monsters you can control their starting stats, resistances, movesets, and species. So starting from common monsters, you can get a very powerful rare monster after several generations of careful breeding. Implementing a breeding system as complex as is dragon warrior monsters would be very hard to do, but I found it to be very fun to play.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on this game, I hope you found them interesting. Good luck with the game, I'm looking forward to playing it.

1. Once again I agree it would be great to add a combo aspect to the game as long as it is kept simple.

2. I think this might be interesting to include but it may not add an enjoyment value that would be worth the extra complexity that came with it. I think the way the pokemon games went about capturing creatures worked really well on it's own.

3. Randomly generated areas would be fun but it would make it hard to design if the whole game was like that. I think that this idea is worth looking into some more though as it could be used for a single area that changes every time you enter. Kind of like the guy in pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald who made the trick rooms, it was different when you went in after completing a certain goal, although In our game it could be different every time you went into the room and have different items, creatures, trainers, etc.

4. I would be interested if some of the creatures could be bred with different species to produce an entirely different species, for example the mule in our world, it is the result of a horse mating with a donkey. (Please don't correct me if I'm wrong as long as you get the point it doesn't matter...) I don't think that breeding should be necessary though as some people hate doing this and i don't like forcing people to do things that are annoying in a video game. You are playing the game to have fun, not mindlessly ride your bike up and down the same road until a baby animal hatches.


Anyway, those are my thoughts. Tell me what you think.

-----------------------------

Sorry, I didn't realize this was so huge...

 

[Sly]

4. I would be interested if some of the creatures could be bred with different species to produce an entirely different species, for example the mule in our world, it is the result of a horse mating with a donkey. (Please don't correct me if I'm wrong as long as you get the point it doesn't matter...) I don't think that breeding should be necessary though as some people hate doing this and i don't like forcing people to do things that are annoying in a video game. You are playing the game to have fun, not mindlessly ride your bike up and down the same road until a baby animal hatches.

Yeh, I'd come to the same conclusion a while back about breeding, I mentioned it a bit in an earlier post but nothing detailed, In game a fair number would be designed to be bred together, obviously they'd have to be designed to be bred, so not all creatures would result in a new breed, it'd take forever, so might even need certain attacks or be be in certain level ranges. As for raising 'eggs' I'm not sure either yet... it is an annoying system yet it's very neutral, but I guess maybe one idea would be to place in a mini game or something. Nice to see we're on the same page though!


Things that I'd like to do but for the sake of Dev times won't be happening

1) Using more Physical/Special moves effects the creatures development... to put it simply, it's a good idea, but complicated, it adds more diversity but in the long term it makes the math and design to complex... e.g. try drawing a creature, then you have to modify it each drawing to be more physical/special and you've doubled the work load needed

2) Multi creature combat... I want to try and get 2 vs. 2 battles in there but anymore than that will probably lead to bulky battle interfaces.

3) a Good/Evil system, for the character and it's creatures... it works but you have to again visually represent it and that doubles drawing times.


Remember, a person has to visually look at his opponent and assess it's strengths/weaknesses. This is why I can't make major differences to the creatures, not in 2D anyways.

Capturing System

I'm still in a debate about this, my mind thinks that yes befriending sounds fun but again, complexity issues occur. It's something I need to put more thought into. What I am interested in is maybe capturing first requires you to somehow 'stun' the enemy creature that then leads into capturing. Part of me looks at Pokemon and thinks it's exciting and at the same time irritating that you have to purely guess when the 'pokeball' will work, when it comes to the really difficult ones you can spend hours just wasting items when it's purely luck if you catch the damn thing.

My idea I guess is, there needs to be some kind of stages to capturing but obviously this can't interfere with the simple task of gain exp. from battling wilds.

Random Areas?

This, I like and dislike, I'm not sure. It'll be kind of a pain to build, plus it could disrupt the story (not that I have one yet), I think to be a single player it needs to a beginning & end. Part of me is thinking tho... perhaps it could be done as a 'safari zone' type place, but with out the stupid no battle system?

----

Wow, loads to write about, it's at least good to see a lot of different ideas flowing around here, it's definitely getting my creative side going. thanks all, keep it coming

 

[bananajamslam]

I think that many of the ideas under this title: "Things that I'd like to do but for the sake of Dev times won't be happening" cannot be determined whether or not they will be plausible until the project has started into the actual 'game making' phase. It may turn out that it's taking too long and we can forget about these things, or it may turn out that it's finishing up rather quickly in which case these things could be added. The aspect of time is always relevant only to the developers and their passion for the game; however, (we can omit the consumers because I don't expect that we will be making any profit from this) and I believe that this must be taken into account also. In other words don't plan on making a world twice the size of the one that is in the pokemon games, especially when it will be so easy to update the game and add more areas and more parts to the story, if you don't think that you will have the attention span to work on an area that big. Start everything at a very small scale with the things that you "must" have at the beginning and then work up.

I agree that the capturing system could be tweaked a bit but i don't know how. I also agree that The random area aspect of the game should be limited to a single area that would be unnecessary towards the games ultimate conclusion.

 

[Vorporeal]

For 1 and 3 in the not happening list - you don't have to change the appearance of the creature every frame. Not even close. You could just keep track of usage stats (they used fire attacks x times, they used physical attacks y times, etc.), and then, when the creature evolves (or whatever similar mechanism is used), it becomes a new creature based on usage. It wouldn't be a linear evolution, but a tree-based evolution path based on move usage. It would be a nice mechanic, and wouldn't be difficult to code.

 

[Jourdy288]

I actually like the idea in 4, I've always loved games that let you breed your own animals, but, just like mech games, they're few and far between. If you could breed and create something new... Perhaps you could throw in a little 'genetics', making some genes stronger than others. Just saying.

 

[Sly]

I think that many of the ideas under this title: "Things that I'd like to do but for the sake of Dev times won't be happening" cannot be determined whether or not they will be plausible until the project has started into the actual 'game making' phase. It may turn out that it's taking too long and we can forget about these things, or it may turn out that it's finishing up rather quickly in which case these things could be added. The aspect of time is always relevant only to the developers and their passion for the game; however, (we can omit the consumers because I don't expect that we will be making any profit from this) and I believe that this must be taken into account also. In other words don't plan on making a world twice the size of the one that is in the pokemon games, especially when it will be so easy to update the game and add more areas and more parts to the story, if you don't think that you will have the attention span to work on an area that big. Start everything at a very small scale with the things that you "must" have at the beginning and then work up.

I agree that the capturing system could be tweaked a bit but i don't know how. I also agree that The random area aspect of the game should be limited to a single area that would be unnecessary towards the games ultimate conclusion.

Well, the way I see it, half completion of a game would be a bit of a drag, a game like this needs a system of rules, changing them half way through would irk someone like me... so once the game mechanics are set, that has to be it really (with out a full reset of the title), can't just change it later on because it would degrade the work of hardcore players... Although in the terms of the world or little things then sure it's ok, but a change later on has to be one that doesn't give an advantage to someone who's only starting out over someone who's already completed the game.

I don't see this as being the 'perfect' game... not everyone is going to like it, but I feel I'm not doing this for myself (well I am in that I really want this game to excist) but I think it has to be at least in single player, a complete experience, no oh look there's a new update purely for the sake of adding one tiny new feature.

For 1 and 3 in the not happening list - you don't have to change the appearance of the creature every frame. Not even close. You could just keep track of usage stats (they used fire attacks x times, they used physical attacks y times, etc.), and then, when the creature evolves (or whatever similar mechanism is used), it becomes a new creature based on usage. It wouldn't be a linear evolution, but a tree-based evolution path based on move usage. It would be a nice mechanic, and wouldn't be difficult to code.

Althought yes, this is possible, the way I see it is... would you rather have a greater range of 'evolutions' over a greater range of different creatures, ultimately a game can get bloated by having to many different types of the same thing. If you look at pokemon itself it became over loaded with creatures after the second generations of games (Ruby, Sapphire & Emerald) imo... If you took something as simple as Pikachu, could you really make more evolutions from that single creature (design wise) or in the end would they all turn out the same? Also to me, it doesn't seem natural, as in, you'll end up focusing to much on the development of your creature and not on the battle.


-----

My apologies, I'm somewhat tired so I probably haven't done all that good a job and backing up my thoughts as I would usually, lol.

 

[foxblock]

I think that many of the ideas under this title: "Things that I'd like to do but for the sake of Dev times won't be happening" cannot be determined whether or not they will be plausible until the project has started into the actual 'game making' phase.

Totally agree here, you should not ditch ideas upfront, maybe just keep them in the back of your mind (which you probably planned).
I agree on the point that multi-creature combat (like 2 vs 2) can be a challange to make, especially in terms of ballance, the "evolving tree" idea with creatures specializing while developing really seems interesting and also would increase the strategical value of the game while additionally increasing replay value ("let's try a different approach on creature X"). It should not be that hard to make, it just comes down to the planning of the whole world, especially the creatures. If they are designed for that system in particular, it's basically done, it just takes some more time in the beginning because you have to develop some creature "lines" and not only some creatures with 1 or 2 evolutions.

foxblock out

Fun fact: The word "creature" was used 6 times in this post.

 

[bananajamslam]

I don't mean that the game can be released before some of the things are completed (and finish the game in updates) just that we shouldn't spend so much time on something, realize it is taking too long, and then abandon the project entirely when we could have a, although lesser, "playable game". When you do big things like this you have to be ready to finish them or there is no point in starting, I have learned that the hard way many times before. I just want everyone to be sure that they understand that for a "playable" and "entertaining" game it probably won't be finished in under a year and you have to be willing to sacrifice a lot of your time towards this (unless we gain substantial support from people willing to help develop the project). I don't want to burst your bubble or anything, believe me I want to see this work as well as you, but I would rather see it go belly up now while it's just an idea and not half finished. I will point out that it is nice to see that support for this seems to be rising.

 

[Prometheus]

3) a Good/Evil system, for the character and it's creatures... it works but you have to again visually represent it and that doubles drawing times.

I just have a quick suggestion, here, if I may give it. MegaMan Legends (PlayStation/Windows 95) had a (basic) good/evil system, as did its sequel, and it was visually represented simply by darkening your colours on-screen (I only wish I had realised this before I spent all that time kicking trash into the market bakery in order to get free money...). It's simple, but it works.

 

[Esn]

Over the past few days I have given this game some thought and come up with some ideas that I thought would improve the game. (Mostly I want to collect all the little scrap pieces of paper and napkins and stuff and write them down somewhere before I lose them!)

Here's my suggestions in order of preference:

[snip]

I like all of your ideas.

I've never played FF7, but if the "meter" system is anything like that in Grandia II, I'll be quite happy.

 

[Raz]

You might also want to look at the Riviera: Promised Land and Tales of Phantasia (Both for GBA) Tactics. Generally, The Riviera Battle System uses a turn-by-turn system with a meter. In Tales of Phantasia, you can actually use your controls to move around and attack. Like you still walk on the map and encounter random enemies, but when you get into a fight you can move in a set of area, jump, attack and do special movies.

 

[Sly]

I don't mean that the game can be released before some of the things are completed (and finish the game in updates) just that we shouldn't spend so much time on something, realize it is taking too long, and then abandon the project entirely when we could have a, although lesser, "playable game". When you do big things like this you have to be ready to finish them or there is no point in starting, I have learned that the hard way many times before. I just want everyone to be sure that they understand that for a "playable" and "entertaining" game it probably won't be finished in under a year and you have to be willing to sacrifice a lot of your time towards this (unless we gain substantial support from people willing to help develop the project). I don't want to burst your bubble or anything, believe me I want to see this work as well as you, but I would rather see it go belly up now while it's just an idea and not half finished. I will point out that it is nice to see that support for this seems to be rising.

True, I guess right now, I'm just thinking purely about the game code wise, and I have to say, I haven't the first clue where to start. I am starting to wonder if this is a little to much above my skill sets, nor have I got the skills to even really lead this project and get the right people working together. etc.

 

[bananajamslam]

I think that the best idea right now, since we have a general idea of what we want to have in the game (you may want to make a list), is to find people who would like to help us with the game. Preferably at least one person who knows where to start as I can't really be of any help at this point.

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We should try and get some publicity through the unofficial blog, maybe someone knows how to go about doing that...