im making a game and i want to talk about it

[Takeoff345]

hi im making a game. the current working title is fivepoint and dear lord i need attention so im gonna talk about it and also answer any questions and ALSO show off my work when i do something cool

fivepoint is a turn-based strategy RPG where you're always cornered and time is always ticking. it encourages quick thinking and repeated practice fights against enemies to get managing them down to a science as you push onwards from place-to-place. outside of safe areas, a timer is always counting down, in and out of battle, even inside your menus. if it hits 0, game over. back to the town you just left.

enemies exist in 10 "cells" surrounding the party, and can move among them to avoid threatening attacks or attempts to flee the battle. but you can use this to your advantage, with a wide array of spells to change their movement behaviors or simply just move them yourself; attempting to either kill them or clear a way to escape the fight. escaping is good, and encouraged - time is precious, after all.

ive been working on this for roughly a month now and it's basically all i think about. i'm primarily working on programming a battle test, that'll let me experiment with the systems and balance everything. the story isn't the most fleshed out, but like every indie game post-ddlc and undertale it's legally required to have an overly complex metanarrative, and i have Ideas(TM). but this is my first game of any scale larger than a text-based adventure for a programming class, so i'm trying to not make the project too ambitious lol

i will yap about what i've done so far but feel free to ask questions or give feedback

 

[Takeoff345]

this is the current idea of how the battle screen is gonna be laid out. so far i've implemented all the menus and am currently working on the actual enemy AI and related stuff. compared to the menus this stuff is HAAAAAAAAARD.....

 

[Takeoff345]

note: these are temp assets and are VERY VERY subject to change. they exist solely for me to get a feel for what's going on

 

[Andrew]

this is the current idea of how the battle screen is gonna be laid out. so far i've implemented all the menus and am currently working on the actual enemy AI and related stuff. compared to the menus this stuff is HAAAAAAAAARD.....

oh this is PRETTY

 

[Takeoff345]

on the music front, I’m not sure what direction to take yet. but i do know i want to try and make all the battle themes in 5/4. there’s a lot of stuff in this game related to the number 5, believe it or not.

i have a few sketches for some songs, but none of them solid enough to share. music is probably the most daunting part of the whole solo indie dev thing, because like. music is something I’m already pretty decent at, so I don’t have an excuse for it to suck. the pressure is on!

 

[borrgb]

Oh this is really nice, i've been writing about a combat system kind of similar to this, but with free movement, areas of effects and simple action combat during downtime;
The style is really fun, i think with some heavy visual effects or background animations it could really hit!!
would love to get in contact

what would the parts between the battles be like?

 

[Takeoff345]

Oh this is really nice, i've been writing about a combat system kind of similar to this, but with free movement, areas of effects and simple action combat during downtime;
The style is really fun, i think with some heavy visual effects or background animations it could really hit!!
would love to get in contact

what would the parts between the battles be like?

Currently, it’s pretty standard lol. Haven’t gotten around to programming it yet, but there’s two sides to it.

Inside a town it’s generally safe, and the timer isn’t present. There may be occasional battles there but not often, and it’s mostly story events and the occasional Classic RPG Puzzle (TM).

The outside world is where the timer rears its head, and is generally pretty straightforward to compensate for that. I’m trying to decide whether I’d like the map to slightly randomize itself each time you venture out, to throw a small wrench into the works and keep players on their toes. I’ll probably experiment with it later and see if it works. But it’s screen-based exploration, the first thing that comes to mind is the original Zelda.

One thing I know for sure is that each coordinate on the world map has a dedicated fight setup. Enemies are predetermined and spaced out ahead of time. This 1) saves me the effort of having to make an algorithm to create non-trivial fight layouts, and 2) keeps the randomness of the timed run much lower to prevent RNG misery. It won’t be perfectly consistent, you’re not gonna get into a fight every screen, and there’ll be some controllable random chance in when you do get into one. But it narrows the possibility field and will potentially help me balance each journey to be the intended level of difficulty - especially with some behind the scenes fudged numbers, lol.

The game will have dedicated save points, so you can’t save in the outside world, which can make some things overly difficult, especially over intended long journeys where one death could possibly lose you 20+ minutes of progress. So there are checkpoints you can reach, where the timer pauses but doesn’t reset. You can save there, and teleport back home, but you won’t be able to teleport out to it again, so it’s more of a last resort “shit I do NOT have enough time to make it all the way”

 

[borrgb]

i see i see i see, all makes sense in my head i think. Kind of like the gameplay structures of Demonschool (town exploration with some combat sometimes) and The Hundred Line (limited excursions) to take recent examples. I think for scale it's best to make a 'demo' version and then let that sit until you're certain it's finishable(, general advice). I do worry that encouraging escaping so much could feel less rewarding; In tactical breach wizards, they have the mechanic of pushing enemies out of windows and off ledges to instantly kill them, undertale kind of does this with the act 'puzzles'. Maybe instead of simply running there could be a way to paralyze, befuddle or bedazzle enemies, to then break the points they stand on like glass to 'defeat' them?
also, what are you making this in? if it's godot i'm quite interested in working on this xD

 

[Takeoff345]

i see i see i see, all makes sense in my head i think. Kind of like the gameplay structures of Demonschool (town exploration with some combat sometimes) and The Hundred Line (limited excursions) to take recent examples. I think for scale it's best to make a 'demo' version and then let that sit until you're certain it's finishable(, general advice). I do worry that encouraging escaping so much could feel less rewarding; In tactical breach wizards, they have the mechanic of pushing enemies out of windows and off ledges to instantly kill them, undertale kind of does this with the act 'puzzles'. Maybe instead of simply running there could be a way to paralyze, befuddle or bedazzle enemies, to then break the points they stand on like glass to 'defeat' them?
also, what are you making this in? if it's godot i'm quite interested in working on this xD

I’ll have to look into those! Honestly my main inspirations were a small segment of OFF where you’re on a timer, the Persona series, and turn-based grid strategy games (though the only one I’m closely familiar with is Mario + Rabbids admittedly, lol…)

I’m not worried about fleeing being unsatisfying, because that’s mostly going to be more of a strategy when you’re actually attempting to move to the next town. You only get XP and items on killing enemies, so hopefully I’m able to encourage sticking near the town and slowly working outwards over the course of several runs, gaining info on the enemies and general layouts while you focus on XP grinding, and THEN making the final push where your main priority is saving time.

And this is in Godot! But it’s my first project in it, and the code is… definitely a first-timer’s. I’m not looking to expand the team outside of myself currently, mostly because I can barely manage myself LOL. Once I’ve got my feet a bit more under me, I guess we’ll have to see. Reach out to me on discord, though! @Takeoff345, I’m in the deskgen server