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Breathing life into a character

About

An action packed, stylized, 3rd person game that is part dungeon crawler/RPG, part open world, part real time strategy game, and shares similarities with MOBAs. Take direct control over a giant champion, that not just command, but has their own abilities to fight, command units and perhaps, occasionally throw them around on the battlefield.​ The goal is to drive back the foes who are threatening the peace of the land.

Each side has their own procedural generated playfield: One where the actual battle is taking place and One where the player conducts progress with "dungeon-runs" in a more open environment (with indoor and outdoor areas, free to choose from) to collect resources, fight minions and bosses, and find items and upgrades to aid their war efforts while the battle is taking place. Furthermore, all units will have a more robust AI system that will enable troop movement on their own (e.g., attacking or falling back based on certain conditions), with the ability to order units around with a variety of commands (flags of interests); if the situation requires it. Progression is solely dependent on how bold the player is in exploring the wilderness (venturing deeper into the unknown), taking risks and completing the mission(s) for the campaign; rather than relying on farming creeps for experience. Question is, Will you be up to the challenge to use clever tactics and be brave enough to fight what lurks in the shadows?

Roadmap

After the completion of the first champion, production will ramp up. Below are the short-to-medium term goals for the project that are also subject to change. [Worth to note that this is just a generalization for the development (also focusing on single player only for the time being), as there are plenty of smaller details to take care of (more boring yet crucial behind the scenes logic, etc.), which in some cases could get out of hand (e.g., performance optimization) and could take up a lot more time than anticipated. Also, the cycle of development tends to change whilst production, so have learnt over the years that nothing is set in stone, and one must be flexible in solving the problems and adjust accordingly.]

1. First the character needs to be animated. It needs a handful of states, namely: idle, walk, running, primary attack (and variants for punching), secondary attack (and variants for stomping), tertiary attack (which is the main attraction of the show: throwing), and hit/damage, crouching and facial animations (with basic emotions: happiness, fear, anger, casual). Also thinking of adding in unique abilities (like planting seeds for units to grow), or states when say the tree is examining something (like lifting up a rotten log, in search for loot).
2. Making a simple test level: Putting all this together and see it in motion (with correct camera work). That is where the concept will be first playable (it will be also shared on the product page on Itch.io) and will be released forwards until completion.
3. Main level generation and basic architecture to support it (e.g. save games, simple menu system). This will probably include constructing models for the map, creating prefabs that the game will be able to use. It is undecided, at this point, whether those will be textured immediately, or not. Will depends on the complexity of the scene. As cobbling all this together will take a few weeks.
4. Laying down the foundations for the "jungle". Creating zones, finalizing styles (Is it a forest, a desert, or a snow biome? – just as an example) and connecting those into one cohesive structure. Also, it is yet to be decided if these maps are traversable only by foot, or there will be methods for fast traveling.
5. Refining the "jungle", completing the inner workings of the generation (e.g., making dungeons). And merging it with the main level (mission objectives, etc.).
6. Crafting of additional units (such as the enemy giant), and implementing mission goals and AI routines. Guessing that this will take more time than just a few days, as the concept of operation has not been fully fledged out. As an example, it is not clear how a unit will respond to commands: How do they prioritize, what their perception reach is, etc. It will all come together when there are more than one unit on screen (which means a lot of dependencies to think of). Also, it remains how deep this AI routine will go for the time being.
7. Implementing/developing combat mechanics for both the battlefield and the dungeons (like implementing the grab-a-unit mechanic or investigating objects). Fine-tuning the speed of said dungeons. Creating and implementing a user interface.
8. Adding skills, new units, the ability to command, loot, upgrades, skill tree and balancing.
9. Reaching a state where the game becomes truly playable, from start to finish.

Could list a lot more things do to, but it will all depend on how the project is progressing, or what difficulties the project is going to face. With that last big project of mine, making sure that everything runs smoothly, in a fairly-complex system, took the longest; because hunting for bugs took up a lot of precious time.

Info

• Official page (releases, blogs, etc.): Itch.io
• Official blog: Gamedev.net
• Live dev board (documented): Trello
• Twitter: @theaaronstory
• Ko-fi: @theaaronstory