jiduthie
Educated
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2006
- Messages
- 94
I've been working on a game off and on for a few years now and its come to the point where I need to make a decision about what to do next. If you'll allow, I want to talk a little about the inspiration and give a description.
The idea is to make a game that plays more or less like King of Dragon Pass, in that you're the "will" behind a village of people and you must guide them to success. There will be farms, herds, population, leaders, turn-based seasons and every so often you'll be confronted by events which will provide alot of the all-important choice and consequence. I thought KoDP was a superb game, and I think alot of people around here do it a disservice by not including it in their top lists of RPG's. It's true that the main character in the game isn't a person, rather a town. It's also true that many of the game's challenges couldn't be overcome with combat. Nevertheless, if people gave it some thought they'd realise that it really delivered alot of what everyone here clamours for. I thought it would be worthwhile to expand this concept in an original setting.
My game's set in a post-apocalyptic world (It wasn't so trendy as to be lame at the time I started, I assure you.) where the ragged survivors are beginning to restore some semblance of civilization. It's the player's job to advance the village to the point that its future is secure. There are four different "paths" to the game(War, Growth, Lore, and Influence) and these all have a couple aspects to them, for example Influence is further split into diplomacy and espionage. Each of these paths have an associated series of events which can eventually offer a way to win the game. Sometimes these paths can be mutually exclusive, for example: you won't be able succeed at, or likely even get, the Influence series of events if you've been destroying everyone you find. Generally though, you can't ignore any path entirely and the degree of specialisation/generalisation is a balancing act. The series of events for a given path are also branching and my goal is to make it possible for the player to completely fail a path so that he must move in another direction. Leaders each have an affinity for a path more or less like each noble worshiped a god in KoDP which determined their ability in certain areas. Emphasizing a given path will have alot to do with what type of leaders you select as your chief and put into other positions of power(The Ring from KoDP is quite a bit more involved here) as well as what kind of actions you take, for example: recovering lots of artifacts from before the fall and studying them will bring Lore events as well as other benefits. I could go on forever, but hopefully that gives you an idea of what I'm shooting for.
Finally, it's probably not a good idea to admit this, but the original goal of the game was to teach myself enough Python to "make a game." Now, though, it's come to the point where the interface is incomplete but works. The underlying mechanics of the village work and are ready to be played with by events. The map is uninteresting at the moment, but it's there and you can send groups of people about it. I can square away variables into a save system that will load and recreate an old village(That was a bitch to figure out when I had no clue what a save system entailed when I started.) There were various features I didn't know if I was going to be able to figure out, various bugs I didn't think I could squash and eventually those problems were solved. The rest is mainly just doing more of the same and I'm fairly confident I can finish the game at this point. Moreover, I have this mass of text files I've accumulated describing scenes, incomplete mechanics, and everthing in between. So while I have achieved my goal, in that I think I could make a game(at least one like this), it seems a shame to stop here.
So my question to the Codex: Would you all be interested in a game like this?
I don't want a career in the game industry, I'm not interested in selling the game, and a lot of the game's appeal would come from the art, for which I'm completely unqualified. This has become something of an obsession though and I'd like a good idea of whether or not I'm barking up the right tree before I start trying to recruit someone and getting more serious.
The idea is to make a game that plays more or less like King of Dragon Pass, in that you're the "will" behind a village of people and you must guide them to success. There will be farms, herds, population, leaders, turn-based seasons and every so often you'll be confronted by events which will provide alot of the all-important choice and consequence. I thought KoDP was a superb game, and I think alot of people around here do it a disservice by not including it in their top lists of RPG's. It's true that the main character in the game isn't a person, rather a town. It's also true that many of the game's challenges couldn't be overcome with combat. Nevertheless, if people gave it some thought they'd realise that it really delivered alot of what everyone here clamours for. I thought it would be worthwhile to expand this concept in an original setting.
My game's set in a post-apocalyptic world (It wasn't so trendy as to be lame at the time I started, I assure you.) where the ragged survivors are beginning to restore some semblance of civilization. It's the player's job to advance the village to the point that its future is secure. There are four different "paths" to the game(War, Growth, Lore, and Influence) and these all have a couple aspects to them, for example Influence is further split into diplomacy and espionage. Each of these paths have an associated series of events which can eventually offer a way to win the game. Sometimes these paths can be mutually exclusive, for example: you won't be able succeed at, or likely even get, the Influence series of events if you've been destroying everyone you find. Generally though, you can't ignore any path entirely and the degree of specialisation/generalisation is a balancing act. The series of events for a given path are also branching and my goal is to make it possible for the player to completely fail a path so that he must move in another direction. Leaders each have an affinity for a path more or less like each noble worshiped a god in KoDP which determined their ability in certain areas. Emphasizing a given path will have alot to do with what type of leaders you select as your chief and put into other positions of power(The Ring from KoDP is quite a bit more involved here) as well as what kind of actions you take, for example: recovering lots of artifacts from before the fall and studying them will bring Lore events as well as other benefits. I could go on forever, but hopefully that gives you an idea of what I'm shooting for.
Finally, it's probably not a good idea to admit this, but the original goal of the game was to teach myself enough Python to "make a game." Now, though, it's come to the point where the interface is incomplete but works. The underlying mechanics of the village work and are ready to be played with by events. The map is uninteresting at the moment, but it's there and you can send groups of people about it. I can square away variables into a save system that will load and recreate an old village(That was a bitch to figure out when I had no clue what a save system entailed when I started.) There were various features I didn't know if I was going to be able to figure out, various bugs I didn't think I could squash and eventually those problems were solved. The rest is mainly just doing more of the same and I'm fairly confident I can finish the game at this point. Moreover, I have this mass of text files I've accumulated describing scenes, incomplete mechanics, and everthing in between. So while I have achieved my goal, in that I think I could make a game(at least one like this), it seems a shame to stop here.
So my question to the Codex: Would you all be interested in a game like this?
I don't want a career in the game industry, I'm not interested in selling the game, and a lot of the game's appeal would come from the art, for which I'm completely unqualified. This has become something of an obsession though and I'd like a good idea of whether or not I'm barking up the right tree before I start trying to recruit someone and getting more serious.
