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WU 2020-7D - Followers, Defence, Monsters (and my favourite Pokemon designs!)

4 years ago - Edited 4 years ago2,869 words

This week, I've made the cave tileset more organic, added following allies and some changes to the combat mechanics, and I've been designing miasmon (which is what the monsters are called in this)! Also, a bit about my favourite Pokemon designs from all eight generations.

I talked a lot about more organic cave tiles last time, and here's what I managed to come up with after playing around with that for a bit:



It's definitely an improvement, though there are still bits about it that bother me, though I don't know if anyone other than me would even notice the bits that make me think "UGH I NEED TO JUST START OVER FROM SCRATCH!!" Probably not! (I don't like how obviously tiled vertically-stacked screen-facing walls are.) I'll just keep it like this for now; I can always tweak things later if I make a few rooms but really can't stand what I have.

That screenshot also shows Deugan following Mardek. Here's another with three Deugans following Mardek:



Silly.

I put off adding this for a while, since I wasn't sure how to handle the follow AI, especially when travelling between rooms. Anticipating issues, I even experimented with this tile-locked walking system like the one in MARDEK, so then I could use the same follow mechanics from that:



As it turned out, though, the AI problems weren't as insurmountable as I thought, due to a fairly recently made Unity add-on. Hopefully that won't become horribly obsolete half way through production.

You can also switch who you're controlling at the press of a button:



This would be for using their individual field abilities, or perhaps NPCs might occasionally say something different to certain characters. Not to the extent where everyone would have a whole different conversation for everyone one of your characters - that'd be ridiculous - but something more like MARDEK, where having certain characters on your party was necessary to unlock certain events.



If you've been following development, you'll know that I've drastically reduced the number of battle statistics that characters have to just two: Body and Mind. Some of you have expressed reservations about it being too simple, which I felt after a bit more experimenting probably was the case.

So I've added separate defence stats. Essences now grant both power and defence for both Body and Mind, and the status menu now shows all these basic stats, plus speed, in a typical JRPG sort of way.



The background also has the blurry environment effect that I planned to include before but didn't get around to; maybe that helps it feel less like a mobile game?

Characters also have a seventh fixed 'innate' equipment/skill slot. I did this because I'm planning to have characters' unique field skills also usable in combat, and this ensures that they'd always be available in both without filling a slot. Plus it made sense for Dharma (the Rohoph of this reimagining) to be a permanent addition to Mardek's arsenal rather than something you can remove.

I've yet to actually plan what the characters' skills will be, and I don't know how Heal could be a field skill; that planning will come later.

But back to defence. Defence is a fairly standard stat in other games which I personally feel isn't given all that much attention; it's just sort of there, behind the scenes. Here, I want every point of defence to feel significant. As such, it serves as a straight reduction of incoming damage, and it's marked on the character's 'status circle' as a thin line above/below the main 'HP' bars (these bars were previously used for Body and Mind XP, which you'd accumulate through use to increase the stats, but that's made redundant with essences so I've scrapped it).

The influence of defence is shown every time an attack lands, like for example:



When an attack hits, a bar (coloured according to that attack's element) appears around the target's 'status circle'. Its total size shows the damage relative to the target's 'HP' (that is, Body or Soul, as appropriate) bar, but there's a darkened section the size of the defence showing how much of the damage was absorbed.

It can lead to enemy designs like this:



Here, these Coconocts have more defence than they have total HP, so you'd be aiming to deal enough damage to get through their armour and make a mark. It's what happens in (some) games like this anyway, but I personally like having the visuals like this, since it also opens up the potential for abilities that alter the defence of allies or enemies in a visual as well as purely mechanical way. Changing the strength of a clearly visual 'shield' like this seems more appealing to me than just altering some hidden numbers.

How well it'll work in practice remains to be seen, but I'll continue tweaking things like this as I - and eventually beta testers - play through some actual gameplay and see how it all feels in practice. We're getting closer to that point!



Maybe that's the most interesting bit to some of you out of the way, but I want to talk in a bit more detail about monster design, since that's going to be a big part of what I need to spend my development time on. I wonder how players perceive this; maybe they just take it for granted that every dungeon's going to be full of baddies, and don't devote much thought to how they were put there by the developers? Since I do have to worry about the details of that myself, it's something I've given a lot of focus to over the years. It's going to be a particular concern with 3D, where each new model will take a lot of time and effort to make and won't be easy to drastically change once it's done.

MARDEK's monsters were fairly ordinary, inspired by the sorts I was used to from games like Final Fantasy, maybe X in particular? In that, there were a handful of monster 'species' which each had several different members that shared animations. It was practical to do things that way, but it led to a lot of forgettable ∞ "Lava Goblin" ∞ kinds of 'designs'.

In later projects, most notably Miasmon, I looked to Pokemon for design inspiration. Pokemon designs - beyond maybe the first generation - have a lot more care put into them because players are expected to potentially spend a lot of time with each individual creature, and to develop emotional bonds with them as well. Many of the designs are clever, multi-layered, meaningful.

Interestingly, Google was running a poll (until?) last week asking people to rate their favourite Pokemon in each of the eight generations. I was curious to see what mine were, since I feel my opinions clash to some degree with those of the hivemind. It seems like many people consider Generation I the untouchable best, with everything since then going downhill, and there's common revulsion for designs like Trubbish and Vanilluxe because apparently Pokemon based on 'objects' is offensively wrong or something like that. Personally, I'm drawn to weird designs, and the eight that I chose were these:



That's Scyther, Girafarig, Metagross, Bronzong, Sigilyph, Honedge, Dhelmise, and Falinks.

My preferences are those of a designer rather than of a player; these aren't chosen because they're 'powerful!!' or whatever. I suppose Metagross is a pseudo-legendary, but that's not why I chose it. Mostly I just like them because of how they look, though the inspirations behind them plays into that as well.

Scyther and Girafarig are favourites due to childhood fondness and memories; I'd call Girafarig my MOST FAVOURITEST EVER Pokemon largely due to nostalgia for a specific team I once had in my first Gold playthrough. Kabutops and Houndoom were close seconds, but beyond those there aren't any that I really love from those first two generations. I like most of Gen 2 and find a lot of Gen 1 annoyingly bland to the point where Let's Go just felt like a chore, but overall most just don't stand out to me as personally exciting.

Gen 3 and 4 were tough decisions; those have the same 'like but not love' feeling for me as a whole. I appreciate them all, but none stand out for me other than these two. Metagross and Bronzong are the same types and similar colours, and I like both due to their general alien oddness. I also like Lopunny from Gen 4 because I think it's hilariously out of place (it's essentially a Playboy bunny in a child-friendly game), so that'd be a runner-up.

I like most of the Generation V Pokemon, and narrowed my choice to 17. When I play a new generation of Pokemon, what I like to do the most is form a party from pokemon I've never seen before, so Gen 5 was amazing for me. This seems to be an uncommon view though, from what I've gathered? Was the reaction to that generation negative because people couldn't use their old favourites? I chose Sigilyph because I love that it's based on ancient 2D depictions of birds which were familiar to me, but with what was intended to be a side-on bird head in those glyphs transformed into this one-eyed thing instead. So clever! So bizarre! I also really like the words 'sigil' and 'glyph' in general (though this makes me annoyed when people say "Siggle-iff" or even "Siggle-aif"; as annoying as turning the pleasing arcane + canine into "ARCA-nine"! Bluh). Runners up were Sawsbuck and Deerling, Golurk, Chandelure, Trubbish, Vanilluxe, Hydreigon, and Musharna.

I chose Honedge rather than Aegislash for Gen 6 even though I like both because the details of this design are just so appealing to me! The lines on the blade forming eyes and teeth through holes in the sheath is just so inspired! It's a wonderful design touch that you couldn't really describe in words as a concept (unlike, say, "a big sword that also has a shield!"); you have to see it executed for it to really have its effect. I also like the design of Binacle and Barbaracle, because of the clever oddness!

Gen 7 was also difficult; I really like a lot of those. Dhelmise, Golisopod, Charjabug, Crabominable + Crabrawler, and Araquanid + Dewpider (though why isn't it called Spidew urrrgggghh??!?!?) are all almost equal, though Dhelmise won because it's teal and bizarre. It's huge too, which I didn't know at first, and which only adds to its odd appeal for me. I love how the whole shape hints at a pirate face with a fanged grin, beard, and eye patch, but it's subtle enough for it to just feel like a non-anthropomorphic alien. Plus the lore behind the Pokemon just being the amorphous algae really adds to the 'ooohhh' factor for me.

Gen 8's the newest, and the party I ended up with was Orbeetle, Centiskorch, Grimmsnarl, Corviknight, Flapple, and Falinks. I like all of those a lot, but I settled on Falinks because when I found it (in game, since I avoid learning about any designs before I play), I thought "what on Earth is THAT??" and had to look over it a bit to make sense of it. "So weird!", I said to myself a few times; that - rather than familiarity - is the feeling I most enjoy experiencing.



I've talked about this in more detail than I intended to, but since Pokemon's more successful than anything I make ever will be and many of you'll have your own favourites, maybe there's some interest in seeing mine! I also wanted to show and explain them to give an idea of what's driving my own creature design decisions.

I've made a whole bunch of miasmon over the past few years, for different projects that I haven't finished. I want to reuse at least a few of the designs in Divine Dreams, so a couple of weeks ago I compiled as many of my old designs as I could find into this image:



Those are divided into what their elements might be if they were included in Divine Dreams; clockwise from the top: Bliss, Destruction, Creation, Sorrow, Courage, Fear. There are a lot more Fear and Destruction than Sorrow and Bliss, which makes sense since they are monsters, so it's easier to imagine things inspired by those more hostile elements.

Like in Pokemon, many of these were meant to evolve, and I gave some thought to how to approach that in Divine Dreams. Do I keep evolution in some form? What form? Would you evolve essences? Could you summon monsters in some form, such that you'd be able to see whatever they evolved into?

Ultimately I realised it'd definitely be too much work creating evolutions for many or all of the monsters, so it'd probably not be a good idea to go down that route. I do have another idea, though.

I've said this in another post, I think, but each dungeon will have a set number of monsters, such that you can 100% the dungeon by defeating them all. They'd come in a number of species, and defeating all members of a certain species would reward you with an essence of that species. I'm thinking six species per dungeon, what with that being the theme number and all.

You wouldn't need to clear all the monsters, of course, but if you did choose to and got 100%, then perhaps that could unlock an optional/secret boss which would be an evolution of one of the dungeon's species. People do seem to like hidden bosses like this, and you'd be rewarded with its essence afterwards so it seems like a good way to go about it. It also allows me to design some evolved forms without having to worry about designing some for every monster.

The planned story also doesn't really have many - any? - "and you have to fight a big, story-unrelated monster to pass" moments, so having something like this is a way of adding that to the game without having to cram any into the actual storyline. (It was also inspired a bit by Yooka-Laylee, which has bosses for every level but they're all optional.)

I've designed eight monsters for the Dreamcave area, though I'll only be including six. Plus the optional boss. Here's what I've got; descriptions are in the images:





I'm thinking of covering all six elements, so I'll likely go with:

Neuronaut, since I like the design and it's the only Sorrow one;
Stratapillar, which would be the one that evolves;
Cavamp, though I've redesigned this a bit since this image;
Awakindle, since it's related to the cultists and as such has actual story relevance;
the unnamed buff chicken thing, since it's the only Courage one;
and Vespidirk, as a reference to my old games like MARDEK (though I don't think there were any bees in the Gem Mine?).

I really like the Buddhafly! That's the kind of design I feel really proud of. The others are mostly passable/okay, but I shouldn't spend too much time trying to aim for a kind of perfection I couldn't ever reach. I'm just one person trying to do everything, so obviously my designs aren't going to be on the same level as Pokemon or anything.

Oh, and the buff chicken thing was derived from an idea suggested by Mania on Twitter, though I don't know if it looks anything like he was imagining! I might give some more attention to it, and I'll need to give it a name.

Those are just the final images from the design process. Here are a few pages of more conceptual sketches, where I was trying to figure stuff out:















As you can see, some designs - like the Buddhafly - come quickly, almost fully formed, whereas others - most notably the Fungoblin - have gone through a bunch of very different concepts without a clear final decision. I want to include Fungoblins since they were in MARDEK, but I wanted to try redesigning them a bit, and... eh. I'm still not happy with what I've got! There are some designs here reminiscent of the silly Happy Johnny MARDEK monsters, some based on the Alora Fane: Creation goblins, and others with Aardman-animation-style mouths that probably don't match the rest of the visual style. I'll probably have to keep playing around with that before I can come to a decision, but it won't really matter for the Dreamcave so I can worry about that later.

I'll likely spend the next week making a bunch of models; there are quite a few I need to make for the demo area. Monsters, characters, a battle background... That's probably the bulk of work I need to do actually, but it shouldn't take too long once I put my mind to it.