Cleveland Mark Blakemore
Golden Era Games
I showed somebody my current engine for the blobber games I was working on and they basically kept asking me about the gulf there between the combat scenes and stylized 3D dungeons.
I know Elminage Gothic did it, but it isn't working for me.
The great thing about this game style is that I can use static images for the monsters and limit my resource requirements and design time.
The bad thing is that the stylized 3D just doesn't suit the 2D combat formats. It made me really frustrated so I dropped it for a while and worked on something else.
I think I came up with a better idea how to approach these and it's an inversion of my normal design process.
Whether it's a fantasy setting, lovecraft genre or straight horror blobber, I need to get the visual formats correct but the most important things is ... to do the design first just as if I was designing a standalone setting for an RPG. Finish the entire scenario and edit it at least once to polish it. It should stand on it's own as an excellent RPG of the sort that the early D&D adventures issued scenarios of in their little booklets.
Now, having turned the design process upside down from what I usually do (build the tools then dynamically put the adventure together from notes) I am left with an implementation required.
I have a small demo of a true old style faux 2D-3D engine using only graphics to assemble the view. (Wizardry, Might & Magic, Lands of Lore etc.) that I can actually make a faux 3D (2D) engine to use in Unity. I have a ton of excellent 2D graphics for blobbers including forests made from panels I found on an obscure web site in Japan called DLSite. Really first rate handpainted artwork, top notch visually.
The problem is I need a really good design tool to accomplish this, which can export file(s) at the end to something computer readable for the mazes and the details. Hopefully something I could even script a little my own to suit my needs. Then, in combination with something like the Charon RPG editor, I could spit the entire scenario out from data files (I was not quite there yet) and literally just run the engine on those files and have any RPG blobber genre I wanted. The genre wouldn't matter. I'd need the 2D graphics followed by the audio, particle effects and other required media and I'd be ready to rock ... same approach every game.
I think I have found the ideal tool ... and I don't have to build my own ... in Grid Cartographer. Just bought it on sale on Steam and it is smashingly good.
This is actually the annotated world map of Wizardry 7. It's a good example of the best way to build a similar open world blobber to Grimoire, this time a bit more rapidly.
I got to playing with it for a while and was actually blocking out Miskatonic University campus ... which shows you it's a great tool if it encourages that design without any tears or constantly having to worry about how this maps back to the implementation of the engine ...
I know Elminage Gothic did it, but it isn't working for me.
The great thing about this game style is that I can use static images for the monsters and limit my resource requirements and design time.
The bad thing is that the stylized 3D just doesn't suit the 2D combat formats. It made me really frustrated so I dropped it for a while and worked on something else.
I think I came up with a better idea how to approach these and it's an inversion of my normal design process.
Whether it's a fantasy setting, lovecraft genre or straight horror blobber, I need to get the visual formats correct but the most important things is ... to do the design first just as if I was designing a standalone setting for an RPG. Finish the entire scenario and edit it at least once to polish it. It should stand on it's own as an excellent RPG of the sort that the early D&D adventures issued scenarios of in their little booklets.
Now, having turned the design process upside down from what I usually do (build the tools then dynamically put the adventure together from notes) I am left with an implementation required.
I have a small demo of a true old style faux 2D-3D engine using only graphics to assemble the view. (Wizardry, Might & Magic, Lands of Lore etc.) that I can actually make a faux 3D (2D) engine to use in Unity. I have a ton of excellent 2D graphics for blobbers including forests made from panels I found on an obscure web site in Japan called DLSite. Really first rate handpainted artwork, top notch visually.
The problem is I need a really good design tool to accomplish this, which can export file(s) at the end to something computer readable for the mazes and the details. Hopefully something I could even script a little my own to suit my needs. Then, in combination with something like the Charon RPG editor, I could spit the entire scenario out from data files (I was not quite there yet) and literally just run the engine on those files and have any RPG blobber genre I wanted. The genre wouldn't matter. I'd need the 2D graphics followed by the audio, particle effects and other required media and I'd be ready to rock ... same approach every game.
I think I have found the ideal tool ... and I don't have to build my own ... in Grid Cartographer. Just bought it on sale on Steam and it is smashingly good.
This is actually the annotated world map of Wizardry 7. It's a good example of the best way to build a similar open world blobber to Grimoire, this time a bit more rapidly.
I got to playing with it for a while and was actually blocking out Miskatonic University campus ... which shows you it's a great tool if it encourages that design without any tears or constantly having to worry about how this maps back to the implementation of the engine ...
