j1e3s5

i recently had an idea while thinking which direction i wanted my rpg to go in. on one hand i love rpgs like dragon quest, more linear story line, and crafted around the story. on the other hand i feel like we as a society are geared more towards "open ended" "sandbox" rpgs nowadays like skyrim and others, however i really REALLY like a good story. it keeps me engaged. comparing skyrim to dragon quest is hard since they are 2 completely different game types, 1 is turn based 1 is action based, completely different art styles, ect. but for me, i only put maybe 15 hours into skyrim, while i put over 100 in dragon quest 8. i love that game. even today, about 10 years after the game came out for ps2, i still remember the quirky characters, and the charm. im actually listening to its soundtrack as i write this :)


however is is possible/feasable to combine the 2? and to do it well? for a indie game?

my idea, and im sure its been thought of before, but my idea was to have a system where random events happen to generate the storyline, have hundreds of events that would BE the storyline, and make the player choose between 2 or 3 or 4 options. for example, maybe have a dozen preset events and places where the character could start in the world. then at startup of a new game choose 1, after that cutscene/event, have the game play similar to skyrim, but with new events happening depending on the players choices/the world around him.

how hard would this be to do in ORK. i also have playmaker, but is this a option? if it even is feasable? i realize it would be ALOT of work, i probably cant even comprehend how much work but i would like to create it if possible. could it even work in playmaker/ORK using their node/event system? i know some things are better off not using them, but i thought cutscenes were good to use playmaker for. im not sure how it would handle everything though. have any games done this well before? and if so could you tell me which?

sorry if this is in the wrong category, if it is feel free to move it, i just wanted ideas on my idea.

wtyson

play mass effect same concept worked great. open world choices and storyline that kept you wanting more.

if your doing cut scenes do you mean playing a vid file or actually doing them them with camera changes ect? cause if your going to just handle it with camera's then ork is already able to do that.

edit to answer yoru question though yeah ork can do it all if your willing to work on it.

j1e3s5

nice, yea i meant like have the camera zoom in on a character and display some choices, similar to skyrim how they pan into the characters while they talk.

i also thought about having action scenes where the player can choose 2 different options, but not displayed by text/paused. meaning the time is passing and they need to make quick decisions maybe someones attacking the village they are in, do they run home to save thier family, or do they try to help the person that is being attacked right next to them that may have a potential item they need or something. things like that where you need to quickly decide what to do. kinda a blend between the 2.

thanks for suggesting mass effect, honestly i never played it before so i didnt know since im not to crazy about sci fi, it looked sci fi to me.

Kirb

It's doable, even with ORK; but realistically speaking, it would take a large team of experienced game developers to make it work and look even remotely professionally good. Even as a professional game designer with a bunch of games under my belt, I can't imagine a sandbox game with that kind of scope taking me less than 4 years working around the clock with a small team and it still probably wouldn't come close.

It sounds to me like you're more interested in making DQ than Skyrim, especially if you've only put a measly 15 hours into Skyrim. :) And DQ is by no means an easy feat either, but I'd say it's much more achievable with your means. Making (and finishing) a game is deceptively difficult!

Make what you want to make, not what you think will sell. People can always tell the difference in the end product, and it's your passion and determination for the project that will see it through to the end.

j1e3s5

true, i didnt think it would be easy, i thought maybe in 3-4 years i could get it done though. i wasnt thinking it would take like 1 year or be some walk in the park. but do you think i should quit? honestly i would LOVE to be able to make a dragon quest-ish game. but the reason i think they are so good is because of the charm they have, the cell shaded graphics. and the cartoony style. and my models dont fit that style. nor does my music that i have.

idk maybe i could just do a skyrim like game, with a linear storyline similar to dragonquest. have some end game dungeons and whatnot... i probably should actually. i guess i was being to ambitious lol ...

Kirb

Nah, don't quit. My advice is just to start small, especially if this is your first game project. Doing a small scale project and finishing it will teach a lot more than starting a very ambitious project and never finishing it.

wtyson

@kirb not so true kirb my game is no small feet. but yet im making great progress every day and is planned to be released next year. of course if you think budget wise time efficiency i know were to cut corners and where not to. but then again it comes down to passion and what your willing to give up to make it. so i kind of agree but at the same time i dont with what your saying. I plan to have around 20 to 30 hours of game play. then again i guess that can be considered a small project nowadays . but just to let you know @j1e3s5 i spend every waking hour that im not working on this game have spent over 2 grand on it and only sleeping like 4 hours a night to make as much time as i can while working 2 jobs . so think to your self what sacrifices are you willing to do in order to make the game you want and make it well enough that people will be willing to buy it. itll be all about your dedication.

j1e3s5

thanks everyone, i think i might give it a go still, and see if im actualy able to do it, honestly like i said before i love a good storyline, the only problem is once your done the game their isnt much motivation to go back and replay, i mean even for a AMAZING game, you still know how the story is going to unfold, so while you may still play it again, you wont get the same value as the first time. so my hope was to be able to have a unique experience at least for maybe 2-3 times. obviously eventually you would have similar storylines if you played the game over and over. but my idea was to have it almost be like reading a book, where you make a decision and your not sure if you "the main character" made the right or wrong decision yet, maybe later down the line since you left your family, your son trys to come and kill you. something like that.

one reason why i was never a fan of the walking dead game is because everytime you made the wrong decision the game would say something like "bob will remember this" and it made me feel like i always made the wrong decision. it also didnt leave much to surprises. i was hoping to create something almost like a book. where you might save someone or do some action, and never really know that they are plotting to kill you, even though you saved them, until they actually come to try to kill you. if that makes sense. pretty much their is not right or wrong decision, you just choose how the story is going to unfold.

but every story needs a ending, so i thought maybe since their wouldnt be a single, villian or enemy, that i could have every game object level up and progress and get stronger, and once someone that is labled as a "enemy" reaches like lvl 50, he becomes the final boss and you get a quest or something to try to kill it. i also thought it would make things more intersteing if npc's lvled up too, for instance if you had to fight a monster destroying the town or save your "signifcant other" that is battling the wizard that summoned it, if every npc had different lvls each time you played the game, it would help you make decisions. maybe your lover is strong enough to beat or survive long enough for you to save the town. but if they are a low lvl you might help them first. something like that.

i stil might attempt to do this, even though im kinda scared it will just flop. lol i too have spent a decent bit of money on some assets and music, and have put a bit of time into my game so far. so i might attempt to create it still..

wtyson

all the power to you man good luck

Firrerreo

Gonna jump in here although I appear to be a little late to the party.

As another professional designer, I'm petty confident in saying I wouldn't feel comfortable tackling a completely lose-form non-linear node-based system... at least, not without an extremely experienced team, solid funding, lots of beer, and some really sound tech and testing to back it up. That way lies so much potential scope creep my eyes are crossing just thinking about it. But that being said, I'm not sure that's *exactly* what you're describing or necessarily after.

Lots of players are out there who will readily agree with you that story is a huge driving force for why they play games, and having their story choices be meaningful and matter is why they prefer games over other story-driven media, like say books or movies. But there's a big difference between a completely open-ended branching system, and one that takes a collection of important decision points to choose a few side branches or embellishing points from, but continues along shared linear paths for easier/more doable content creation.

I think you also need to decide what's more important to you - a well crafted storyline that the player has some agency in, or total and complete replayability - the two don't necessarily live happily together, at least, not easily. And I'm a bit confused from your posts which one is the clear winner. If the game is totally based on a series of random events that the player then interacts with to choose more random events, you're going to have a much harder time developing character arcs, cohesive plots, and a compelling rise towards an eventual resolution. The amount of extra content you'd need to create for each possible scenario in order to provide a complete story experience would start to balloon quite fiercely. If you're really after replayability, a shorter, more concise story will be your friend - the amount of players that actually finish a game once is staggering low, and much less so for people who complete games multiple times. If you'd like to empower your players to replay your game lots of times, make sure it's concise enough for them to do so easily. No one likes making content that only 2% of your players, or fewer, ever actually see. And it's not even necessarily that it's because it's a bad game or the player got bored - how much time players have to devote to a single game, in an ever expanding market, is getting less and less, and you want to capitalize on what time you do have as strongly as possible.

What I would suggest is being to work out one single storyline you like, on paper, and break it up into nodes/arcs/easily contained chunks. Then determine along this storyline places where a player choice could have the *most* meaningful impact. Branch out there and make two different node scenarios, but then also try and reconnect them back into the main line or share content along the way. Find another choice point and repeat. The more content you can reuse and reconnect back to the main line (even if it's flipped around in different places) the easier time you'll have, and the greater likelihood of finishing. Also look for easy ways to take previous choices and change up minor details about your story - major plot points might not be affected but you can do a lot with just changing up some small details like motivation, switching out a character or two, changing up difficulty, having A vs B being alive, etc.

You might find Chris Crawford's varies talks and books on interactive storytelling helpful (easy google, tons of stuff), and I'd recommend checking out Facade as an example of some crazy nodal storyteling (http://www.interactivestory.net/). Those old Choose Your Own Adventure books also have some good concrete examples on how to share content and intertwine player choice paths without having completely insane scope creep.


EDIT: Some completion rates are given way down on slide 23 from that first link. Although, you might find the entire presentation relevant to your interests. :)

j1e3s5

thanks so much for all that information! :) i guess i will do what you say, since you made so much sense, ill try to make a story and just have different parts where the story branches off after a decision, and sometimes have the branches come back into each other. makes sense, thanks! :) ill check the links and i do remember those choose your own adventure books, they were pretty cool and interesting.

would it be ok you think, if instead of having a randomly generated story with hundreds of events like you said, instead have alot of branches in the main story? so its somewhat different each time? idk it just sounded like from your post you only meant put a few branches/choices in the storyline/main story. how much would be too much do you think?

ill check out those links thanks! :)

Firrerreo

"How many is too many" starts to become an economics of scale question - how much time do you have and what's your budget/resources look like? How big is each branch or change? If the branches were super tiny, you could easily make quite a few since generating and maintaining each wouldn't be a huge feat. If they were quite large in breadth and scope and contained a whole lot of unique content, you might find having only a small handful would be doable. I'm not party to your timeline, experience, or resource budget, so I can't really in good faith give you a hard number, like "3". Or 12. Or 50.

When you start to work it all out on paper first, start to make a guess at how "much" content is in that branch, how much of that content is unique and how much shared/reused, and from there, how much time you think it will take you to generate it. It'll be your judgement call then on whether that branch, as written, is worth the production cost. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. If it's totally doable, continue on. If it looks to be a bit too large for what it offer's the player's experience in return (for you and your resources and what you consider reasonable) then look at ways of scaling it back first before cutting it off completely. Is there another way to give the player a similar choice and experience using existing content? Can the choice ramifications just be made smaller? Can it be moved somewhere else in the system so that it doesn't affect as much other content?

Another example that comes to mind that's pretty similar to what you describe in your last paragraph is Long Live the Queen. There's basically one storyline in effect - survive your coronation - but the little event branches that are player-driven are quite numerous (and quite small). The small branches routinely come together for shared content before branching out permanently into a couple of different possible endings. Where they perma-branch is pretty late in each scenario, so while the play experience is different every time (thanks to the tiny branches) the amount of completely unique content the devs had to make was minimized. Just another approach you might find appealing and doable.

Bastokiamtheone77

Ideas are great to have but will they work with Unity. that is a 1000 piece puzzle. So well if you start from what seems like will be stable i would go from there and then build off the stable idea first.

I have been using Unity since July and it seems there is more unstable scripts then what is in a original idea to make a Golden RPG again. I know exactly how you feel and know the concept of where that is going.

If you like to check out our idea or like to know what to do with a idea like the Op.
Just see the development team on Facebook here. https://www.facebook.com/groups/747442118670122/

Catacomber

OMG, I couldn't somehow log in.

Ii tried on my iPad.

Maybe you could put up some screenshots here of what your team is doing. That would be more helpful perhaps. : )

So tell us about all the games you've made and what programs you've tried making them in. Did you really use rpg maker at some point and what were your favorite parts about using it. I never tried.

I know it's quite useful but ORK sort of blows it out of the water. : )

Bastokiamtheone77

RpG maker is simple for simple minds and is fun to use for Entertainment. look at my stats on STEAM lol its like i would rather play Software developing games then fall asleep playing known RPG in the past and have. ()_)( zzzzz

Catacomber

Maybe post in one thread here where you introduce yourself and not scatter your posts everywhere so we wonder what's going on? You have me a little confused as to what you want to accomplish.