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American Hare

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EPIC
 

Chefe

Erudite
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I was thinking about building it around the concept that you can royally screw up really easy, which then makes it incredibly difficult to get back on track, but by the time you realize you screwed up it will be too late to revert to a previous save... because you probably saved over it.

Helton said:
Will there be voice acting?

Maybe.
 
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Do you need another writer Chefe? I must work on this brilliant masterpiece. If it helps I have screenwriting experience. Oh please Chefe!
 

Helton

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Dr. G cackles manicly and shit into the dark nothingness of the unlit, empty room.

"CACACACA!"

You walk up behind the Dr. What do you ssay?

1. What's up, doc?
2. So what'll it be? The carrot? Or the stick? And by stick I mean my humongous throbbing cock... And that's what I mean by carrot as well.
3. Click-Click, BANG! Nigga.
 

Chefe

Erudite
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sportforredneck said:
Chefe said:
Provide a sample of your writing.
Can you give me a set up and I will write that out?

A group of heavily religious (Catholic) Mexicans think you're a demon. Lead by a priest, they take you to the church to be "cleansed". They have brought you there with a rope tied around your neck.

Pretty easy set up, I think.
 

DefJam101

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Chefey, I'm confused.

Is this going to be a text adventure game a-la Hitchhiker's Guide or a CRPG that is presented using a text interface? If the latter is the case, what will we be seeing as far as weapons go? If the former is the case, what will we be seeing as far as weapons go?
 

Chefe

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Actually, I have not yet decided how it will be presented, but it will be a CRPG, not an adventure game. Right now I'm focused on the story, characters, and tying skills and experience points into c&c (choices and consequences).

The three main skills are mind, body, and focus, and I'll expand upon them on a later post. Each has 10 different levels it can be raised to, with some levels bringing additional "perks", but mostly just increasing your chances at performing an action successfully. They also tie into each other, which is an idea I've wanted from the very start (ex. Body + Focus = Coercion).

Once I start on the puzzles and more combat-oriented situations, then I'll start to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of different types of CRPG systems, methods for gaining experience, and weapons. My guess is that it will end up being some sort of hybrid in that regard. Weapon types will not be playing a huge part, since combat is done through text, and is mostly about using your environment to your advantage, instead of pulling an uzi out of your magical inventory.

If you ignored all that, here's the recap: I don't know yet whether this will be text based, isometric, first person, third person, ninth person, or whatever. It will, however, be a CRPG.
 

Helton

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Kind of like Ultima 4? You'll end up with like 7 derivative stats from the base 3. Be cool if you came up with non-linear progression, though. 8 Focus and 1 Body = 9 Coercion and so does 4 Focus and 5 Body, which is fine but is missing an opportunity to make a whole bunch of cool as formulas and shit.
 

DefJam101

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Well, good luck Chefe ma boi. I don't think you need any help with the writing, that 'excerpt' you gave a while back kicked some serious ass. If you need ideas for quests and such, external help could be very useful.

This usually amounts to followers and NPCs doing an “alignment check” when you talk to them, and whether you get the “good” ending, the “bad” ending, or the “boring” ending where you’re persuaded to play a little more extreme with your morality next time.

EXTREME!!
 

Chefe

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Helton said:
Kind of like Ultima 4? You'll end up with like 7 derivative stats from the base 3. Be cool if you came up with non-linear progression, though. 8 Focus and 1 Body = 9 Coercion and so does 4 Focus and 5 Body, which is fine but is missing an opportunity to make a whole bunch of cool as formulas and shit.

... and this is why the first two posts haven't delt with skills. The whole skills helping skills system is tough to balance out. Obviously, 8 focus and 1 body shouldn't net you the same level of coercion as 4 focus and 5 body. However, I really want to avoid creating a situation where you're micro managing your stats, because it would take away from what this game is really about.

Most of the game is based on percentages. Now, keep in mind that these are not normal percentages. If you fail to pick a lock the game doesn't persuade you to reload. Instead, you are forced to find an alternate, yet interesting, route. There is no level grinding to raise these percentages, such as success at picking locks. Instead, there are experience points.

Let me elaborate. These are not your normal every day experience points. In fact, you don't need to raise a single level in anything to finish the game. It will be extremely fucking difficult, but you can go through the entire game with both skills at level 1. This is because the world is filled with hundreds of skill checks, and you can't join any job outside of migrant farming without some skill. Jobs are a huge part, and so is travel (migrant farming is the slowest form of travel). If, however, you want to make the game more interesting, and pursue some unique challenges outside of "how can I avoid dying?", then you'll want to seek out EXP.

EXP is hidden.

That's right. EXP is hidden. You don't magically get it for talking to someone or delivering a box. You have to solve puzzles and find the right connections to increase your skills.

That's another reason why stat balancing is particularly difficult. How much experience should be awarded? How much should be required to raise a level? How should the areas and quests be balanced to make use of this?

Anyways, I've rambled. Back to coercion and that mess. The simplest method (note I didn't say "best") would be to base your success on your lowest sill. For a wonderful example, let's look at... coercion. 8 focus and 1 body gives you the percentage for coercion success that 1 focus and 1 body would. 4 focus and 5 body would give you the percentage that 4 focus and 4 body would. Of course, the problem there is that coercion would obviously be more influenced by focus than body, and the game would be forcing you to develop both sills equally, which would suck and completely ruin all my intentions of c&c.

One way through this problem would be that each "sub skill" has it's own requirements. In the coercion example, focus could count for double when calculating. However, as you can probably surmise, doing it like this would easily lead to percentages way over 100. So, I thought, focus could still count double, but each point would be worth 0.5 instead of 1 in the behind-the-scenes calculation. That, however, would make the chance of success way too low. So, I'll add on 25% to each.

Example (Coercion):
10F + 10B = (10.0 + 5.0)/2.0 = (7.50 + 2.5) x 0.10 = 100.00%
8F + 1B = (8.0 + 0.5)/2.0 = (4.25 + 2.5) x 0.10 = 67.50%
1F + 8B = (1.0 + 4.0)/2.0 = (2.50 + 2.5) x 0.10 = 50.00%
4F + 5B = (4.0 + 2.5)/2.0 = (3.25 + 2.5) x 0.10 = 57.50%
5F + 4B = (5.0 + 2.0)/2.0 = (3.50 + 2.5) x 0.10 = 60.00%

As you can see, 8F and 1B will net you a 17% greater chance than vice versa, but you are still rewarded for developing your body skill so damn high instead of being severely punished for not developing your focus skill (which would totally ignore the fact that body is an important part of this coercion sub-skill). Meanwhile, keeping both F and B around the same number (4 and 5) will lead to only a moderate difference.

The problem with using percentages, of course, is that someone could just have bad luck and no matter how much they raise their skills, they always get the bad roll of the die. In that regard, I think there should be some kind of check to determine whether your last chance was successful or not, and then add on a random percentage to your next chance that increases it.

Example:
You have 4F and 5B. Your chance at coercion is 57.50%. You attempt to coerce, and you fail. A ten-sided die is rolled (all done behind the scenes of course, so you can't actually see a skill increase on your character sheet after a failed attempt) and it lands on 6. On your next attempt, you will have a 63.5% chance. If you succeed, your chance will drop back to your regular 57.5% If you fail, the dice is rolled again. Of course, if you have a perfect 10 in each, your chance is 100 and will never fail. If you have 9's in each, then if you miss the first attempt, you can be pretty damn sure you'll get the next one.

Thoughts?


Edit: This is also available on the American Hare blog.
 
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Well it would take Chefe forever to write the whole game if he had to do it all himself. And I'll get that writing sample to you probably later today Chefe. I have to read about the different paths and stuff more deeply so I know what options to have possible.
 

DefJam101

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There is a difference between writing the game and plotting the game. I think that Chefe could write the entire thing by himself, but he would benefit greatly by having others create storyboards and such for the game. Stylistically speaking, I think it's better to have 1 writer, anyways.
 

Chefe

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There's probably something magical and fun about storyboarding, but I haven't found it yet. Whenever I tried to jump into Dia I could feel the creativity being drained from my body. I prefer a nice, clean word document.

sportforredneck said:
Well it would take Chefe forever to write the whole game if he had to do it all himself. And I'll get that writing sample to you probably later today Chefe. I have to read about the different paths and stuff more deeply so I know what options to have possible.

If you're serious, which I doubt you are, then I suggest you come at this writing with no reserves whatsoever in regards to actual content. Dialog is based around good, bad, and crazy personalities. This may seem very open ended, but there is a basic restriction here, and it lies in not going off on a tangent (which I did in my horrible "cab driver" example a few pages back). Make sure at the end of your dialog that points can be awarded in one or two of these categories (preferably one, two in only the most dire of situations).

Keep things focused and dialog choices meaningful. There needs to be actual choice, not just the illusion of choice. Remember that the NPCs are non playable characters, not robots. They have their own motivations, backstories, morals, and personalities (Juan Carlos is the exception to most of these categories... he's the Sogg Mead Mug of American Hare). Think about how people would react in the real world and not in a game.

Make things seem progressive. Dialog is the only focus of this game (combat, too, is handled through dialog sequences, as you've seen in the old examples). The normal dialog "fishing" that happens in RPGs should be as minimal as possible.

For action sequences, you want to make them incredibly unpredictable and heart throbbing. The dialog screen (and possibly a static image) is all the player will be seeing, so they need to be kept engaged. Throw out normal RPG conventions. You and your enemies have the freedom to do anything allowed by the laws of physics. The only limits are your own character's morality and health (health is a new concept which I've only briefly thought about).

What else? Death and total disability (losing legs, paralysis, etc.) are very, very, very hard to achieve and incredibly rare. Only the craziest nuts will go through with it. Likewise, when you do find yourself in a death situation, it has to be fucking spectacular, and have an interesting life-flash-before-your-eyes ending (none of these endings can give away the story though... so no thoughts on your pre-amnesia life). I've thrown in a little cheat here to help out. The character is a biologically engineered man/hare hybrid, created by an extremely talented and genius scientist. Your body is quite sturdy, and can withstand a good amount of dehydration and blood loss... and intense pain. Don't take this too far though. Keep it somewhat grounded in reality, but give yourself room to move around.

What else? I'm not looking for something to actually put in the game. I need an example before we would be able to coordinate on the story and such. Make it seem like it does come from the real thing, though.

There's probably other stuff, but that's all I can really think of for now.
 

Hory

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That logo looks more like stolen from Cartoon Network, except it sucks.
Just find a nice font and write American with blue, Hare with red, and the ears on the "a" with white.
 

Chefe

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I didn't have any other updates and I wanted to post something.
 
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Chefe said:
If you're serious, which I doubt you are, then I suggest you come at this writing with no reserves whatsoever in regards to actual content.
I am serious. I need writing experience, even if it is working on a vapourware game, it's still worth it. Especially if it's a video game of some sort.
 

Kz3r0

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DefJam101 said:
I have a feeling this is going to end up being something like a cross between Fallout and Postal.
:shock:
Pure awesomeness. :lol:
 

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