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AFC Remake - Draft 2

3 years ago2,565 words

A revision of some ideas from the other day!

Game development is an iterative process; ideas need to be refined and revised repeatedly to end up with something that works best. ∞ A couple of days ago, I wrote a post where I talked about some vague ideas for a 'remake' for Alora Fane: Creation. ∞ A couple of comments - especially from Mania, who's probably played around with the original AFC at least as much as I have, maybe more - inspired me to take things in another direction, and I lay awake for a couple of hours last night because I was so eager to write out the ideas buzzing around in my brain, so that's what I'm doing now!

Like the previous post, this is just a draft, brainstorming; nothing's final or decided. I'm just playing around with ideas, and am very much open to suggestions.

Overview

One of the reasons I'm interested in this is because I've been wanting to make use of the 'social battles' concept for a long while, so I want to keep at least some aspects of that... though I think I'll do away with the separate battle system instead, while incorporating aspects of point-and-click adventure games, kind of. I'm imagining something that allows for the player to have varied interactions with most objects in the environment, and for quest creators to add many varied reactions to all kinds of things.

Setting

Neverwinter Nights (NWN) - which I spent many months making 'modules' in as a teen, and which was the primary inspiration for AFC - was set in a D&D world (a setting called Forgotten Realms, I think?), and all its features (classes, monster types, overall feel, etc) were made with that in mind. You could still kind of make something more unique, but you had to do it using the frameworks of wizards and warriors and fantasy-mediaeval-type props and backdrops.

Similarly, this would be set in the world of Alora Fane, and would have aspects of that world that you'd be be making use of when making your own quests. It's not a blank slate to bring your wildest dreams to life. This was true of the original AFC too. NWN was dark, gritty, and serious, but - again, like the original AFC - I'm intending to go in a lighthearted, silly direction.

With those things in mind, I'm thinking that the main lore focus of the setting would be that people and creatures could use sentimancy, which allows them to channel thoughts and feelings into what are essentially magic spells. It's basically the same idea that I had in AFC and early versions of Atonal/Divine Dreams - and Taming Dreams - which I've repeatedly concluded would probably work better than something purely social. I have this imagine in my mind of some eccentric wizard charging like Goku, wreathed in glowing energy and striking a ridiculous power pose, screaming "FRIENDLY GREETIIIIING!!!" and then lobbing a ball of that energy at a target, who smiles amiably at the niceness of their interaction. I just think it's funny!



I'd also be sticking with either the elements (Courage, Fear, Bliss, Destruction, Creation, Sorrow), or the sentiments (Amity-Enmity, Joy-Sorrow, Desire-Fear).



I want to use the latter since I'll be using the former in Atonal Dreams, plus if quests could be marked as a single one as they could in AFC, I think it's sillier and easier to understand having a Desire-based one (a love story or something full of innuendo) than a Creation-based one. They'd also be used to determine mechanical and aesthetic stuff like how skills might work, and things I'd make for the game like musical pieces and jingles.

Versatile Field

Instead of a separate battle system, everything happens on the field.

Because of this, I'd want the characters to be stylised such that their heads - and facial expressions - were large and obvious as you walked around.



In the original AFC, characters' battle models used a 3/4 view, while their field sprites had poses for the four cardinal directions. Belief and Atonal Dreams' dialogue scenes use 3D characters posed at an angle, to mimic that 3/4 and show more expression; they'd look stupid if they were shown side-on!



I've been giving some thought to how exactly I'd position - and angle - the characters on the map to get the effect I want. It'd probably end up looking similar to that Belief screenshot actually, in terms of character orientation and model proportions, though maybe more top-down (but not so top-down that you couldn't see faces).

This is one of the advantages of 3D over 2D, by the way; for 2D, I'd need to either lock characters into a mirrored 3/4 pose that they stay in when moving north or south, or I'd need to make every model three or four times to account for all the cardinal directions.

I'm also thinking that characters could move locked to a grid like in MARDEK (as opposed to the freer movement in AD), as I like the 'solid' feel of it and it'd probably prevent some issues I'd anticipate from free movement.

An Interactive Environment

Your player character would have two sets of things that they could use: sentimancy and items. Importantly, you could bring up the menus to use them - maybe with the controller shoulder buttons, or keyboard equivalents - at any time outside of dialogue, and use them on anything in the environment. (Alternatively, they could be shown in an omnipresent bottom bar.)

Sentimancy would basically be magic spells, and a character could have up to six at once. You could find or equip them, and of course quest creators could assign them to characters as desired. When used, the character would play an animation with an ostentatious charge effect, and it'd apply a particle effect at the target.

You'd have a limited inventory space for items, and they'd work more like point-and-click adventure game items than generic RPG clutter. You could also select to use them at any time outside of dialogue, on anything.



Quest creators could add creatures and props to their maps, and each of them could have a list of reactions assigned to them. These reactions would look something like this:



So essentially, the gameplay would involve using spells and items on various things, some of which would react in a way the quest creator had specified. This should allow for a LOT of possibilities!

I'm wondering whether to have no basic 'interact' option, instead requiring quest creators to assign the protagonist at least one sentimancy spell to use, so for example they could decide that their leading character is only ever friendly or furious - assigning them an Amity skill and an Enmity one - and it's up to the player to decide which one they should be when interacting with anyone. I can see this being contended for not being intuitive enough, but I wonder if a short tutorial/sample quest would be enough to address that?

Dialogue

Dialogue bubbles would appear over speakers' heads, as in the original AFC. Unlike in AFC, you could specify text box colours to individual creatures from a limited list of possibilities.

Each line could have a number of emotes assigned to it, for the speaker and as many other creatures as you wanted (meaning they'd also emote when that line was said). These would work similarly to what I have in AD; I've been working with various iterations of the system for a while now, and they only take seconds to assign and are very versatile. You'd be able to specify the eyebrows and mouth from a list of options, and could control the eyelids and eyes' direction using simple visual controls. You could also set states like blushing and crying. AD allows for control of the neck and head rotations - within limits - though I'll experiment and decide whether or not that's overcomplicating things. Chances are I'll try to streamline this system while retaining its potential. (This is something that'd be clearer with an example than a block of descriptive text.)

Each creature type I add would have their own sets of facial features, and if I did include more than just humans, I'd consider designs' ability to emote before adding them.

Conversations would be made up of a list of Lines, which could be either spoken text, or an action. These actions would work exactly the same as reactions mentioned above: they'd have conditions that, if met, would trigger the list of actions in order. This would allow for simple branched conversations based on conditions.

I could also allow for lines to be set to explicit sets of up to six Options, each of which would have its own conditions for appearing and actions that'd trigger when selecting it.

I have some other thoughts about the technical aspects of how I could set up dialogue in a simple, versatile, and intuitive way, but it's the sort of stuff that'd be better to experiment with before knowing whether or not it works.

Rooms

I like the idea of quests being made up of a grid of 'rooms', each of which displays as a diorama, as I said in the previous post. Each of these rooms would be made of a grid (size TBD) of tiles which have an assigned elevation value between 0 and 6. Newly-created rooms would have all their tiles set to an elevation of 3, and the quest creator could use a simple tool to increase the elevation with a left click, or decrease it with a right click. This would create cliffs, with 'rounded' (triangular) edges like the ones in Atonal Dreams:




You'd also be able to specify a single 'water depth' value for rooms, between 0 (no water) and 6 (filled to the brim). I'd probably allow for walking underwater with some simple effects like slowdown, ripples, bubbles, etc (swimming would be too much work), though that's hardly a priority. Mostly water would just be used for decorative pools and such, which you'd create by lowering the elevation of a bit of ground and then setting the water level appropriately.

Each tileset would have a basic texture type for their ground blocks; something earthy for the default generic exterior, for example. You'd also be able to use a separate brush tool to 'paint' two different textures per tileset onto the bare ground; grass and sand, for example, allowing your rooms' ground to be made of a mix of bare dirt, sand, and grass, which is more than enough. There are technical and aesthetic reasons I'd want to limit the number of possible floor textures. If you wanted a different kind of floor, you could just make another room with a different tileset.

Each tileset would have a small number of environmental decorations like plants, rocks, trees, and houses, which could be placed and rotated. These couldn't be interacted with by the player directly (though you could use hidden trigger objects if you desperately wanted them to talk to trees or whatever).

There'd also be a much larger number of universal props that could be placed regardless of tileset, and these could be interacted with using spells or items. The only difference between them and creatures would be that they'd be inanimate. Doors and things would be types of prop.

Speaking of creatures, I don't think they could be set up to move around in AFC? I could do that with this, allowing the quest creator to easily set patrol routes for creatures between a series of waypoints.

I'd aim to make the editor as intuitive as possible to use, but a lot of the details will come from experimentation. I'll be basing it on the editor I made for building Atonal Dreams' maps.

Battle System

If I bothered adding battle mechanics at all, I'm thinking something like a tactical RPG. One action that could be executed either by interacting with a creature or prop or through conversation could be something like 'start battle' or 'ACTION SCENE!', which would bring up some HP gauges and lock the player into place. All combatants would then take turns, and on your turn you'd be able to select sentimancy or an item, perhaps with a range of effect, or you could move around, again maybe within a range (you couldn't leave the current room).

There could be a super simple statistical system, like maybe characters have 'Willpower' (HP), 'Charisma' (attack), 'Resistance' (defence), and Speed stats, and that's it. Sentimancy would have sentiments, and you could cause moods to act as multipliers, but nothing more complex than that.

Instead of having a fixed party of allies, perhaps instead dialogue options could mark creatures with states like 'follow player' - causing them to walk in a chain behind you like in MARDEK - and 'controllable in battle', allowing you to select their actions on their turns. You might be able to open up a simple status menu for any creature in the environment; maybe only the player character could change their skills and collect items (though all creatures could have inventories, and actions could be used to set skills for any creature).

I wonder whether most players would want or expect some kind of basic battle system, but I honestly don't know. I know I filled my NWN modules with random monster encounters because the games I grew up with had those, and when I played user-made adventure things for that Spore DLC most of them were some kind of war that revolved around repetitive fighting with minimal dialogue. It might be different with an audience that grew up with things like Minecraft though.

It's something that'd need some experimentation to settle or something that might appeal both to those kinds of minds, and the ones that'd rather make something primarily or purely narrative.



This is very much a broad strokes, big picture sketch; details like specific, gimmicky dialogue commands (eg making characters transform) are the sort of things I'd consider after establishing a basic foundation like I've laid out here.

I've been quite excited thinking about this and I'm eager to jump into prototyping! But it might be wise to wait a bit to hear your thoughts before proceeding. Do you have any of those thoughts to share?!?!?

(It's difficult to convey exactly what I have in mind in just text, and a playable version would make it all so much clearer... but obviously that's a tiny bit more difficult to make!)

Oh, I do want to stress that I'm still seeing this as a side project that I'd work on alongside Atonal Dreams. Unlike with that, this should be simpler to make because I mainly just have to set up the mechanics rather than writing a long story; AD would be out now if that was all I had to do for it. I'll need to make some 'official quests' to bundle with a release though, which is a concern since the struggle to do that is why I never officially released AFC... but I'll figure out how to overcome that hurdle when I get there.