Dragonhelm (Tactical roleplaying game)

Here is a short presentation of the project im currently working on with the working title of Dragonhelm. Even though it quite some time before its finished.

As I have always enjoyed playing roleplaying games and especially rogue style roleplaying games, where gameplay is in the driving seat and graphics and sound is of less important I decided to kick off my own project, which aim is to mix the things that I enjoyed the most from all these types of games, and add several new elements to expand on the areas that I thought was missing. This gave the idea to make this game.

The game is designed to be primarily a roleplaying game, but also features strategic elements as the player are also the ruler of there own city and land. This is not just by title, the player is in full control of how they choose to rule the city and treat their citizens. Whether the player choose to use the treasury as a personal piggy bank or buy food for the starving citizens, the choice is theirs.

However Dragonhelm is only a small city and of little importance to the four huge empires who are all ruled by a supreme ruler chosen amongst one of these. And the laws chosen here also apply to the player, which will force them to maintain a good relationship with the supreme ruler, as he/she can also decide the fate of a disobedient player who choose not to follow the laws.

So besides just being a roleplaying game, the player will have a lot of choices to make regarding the political situation going on through out the land, and the game will evolve based on what the player decide to do in certain situations.

An example could be that one of the players trading caravans have been robbed in a foreign empire, and its very likely the work of the empire it self, but are trying to blame the lack of protection of the caravan on the player, How the player choose to solve it, will affect how the game plays out.

Since it is primarily a roleplaying game a huge part of game is about levelling and evolving the characters and as the rest of game it is based on freedom. So there are currently no level cap and only a few abilities have limits to how many skill points can be put into them.

Besides abilities the game also features skills, which range from a skill like "Guard" which will allow one character to absorb all damage done to another character for the remaining of the combat round, to skills such as "Riding" which will allow a character to use mount in combat.

The game is tactical turn based so the player will control each of there characters in combat the same way you will see it in a game like UFO - Enemy unknown.

So the overall idea is to make a game where the player is presented with choices and choose what to do rather than guided along a fix path chosen by the game, Which aims to make the game feel fresh each time and so the player never really knows what will happen next.

These are a mixture of feature already in the game and those under consideration.

• Open ended world.
• Event driven world.
• Skill system featuring currently 53 skills.
• Random dungeon generator.
• City management including wage, happiness and crime/judgement system.
• Resource management current 8 types. These are material that are used by citizens and trading.
• Extensive crafting system with weapon crafting, armor crafting, magic item crafting, spell crafting and poison and alchemy crafting.
• 4 different races.
• 6 different classes which can be customized as the player see fit. Which will add close to endless possibilities.
• Individual relationship between empires and people.
• Random generated quests.
• 57 different types of weapons.
• Real time system which feature day, week, month and year.
• System handling ageing and behaviours of rulers.
• Weather system.
• System for handling diseases.
• Counsellors that help advise the player what to do. (If not corrupted.)
• Expanding empire.
• Building construction.
• Fame system that can help the player through rough times and help them influence the empires.

It is currently a bit to early to show a lot of screenshots of the game as the graphics in the game is just working material.

Screenshot of the map and the surrounding around Dragonhelm which are the city the player rules. (Map is not completed yet.)

Character creation sheet.

First attempt to make a character in inkscape to test out the program. Since I couldn't figure out how to make gradients I decided to just make the character as flat as a pancake and since the size of the characters ain't larger than 64x64 pixels i will have to check if its worth spending time on.

Second character, went a bit better workflow wise, but still cant figure out how to add shadows correctly.

For the third character I decided it was time to create a rogue and see if I could add some shadows and highlights to it. As I couldn't find any good way to do it automatically I decided to add them my self.

Decided to save the priest character as there was still hope for that one and in the process change some of the things I didn't like with the first one.

Dwarf - Druid with wolf companion

Give a rough estimate of how far each part is. Character creation |-----------------------X--| Skill system |-----X--------------------| Music/sound |X-------------------------| Graphics |X-------------------------| Tactical combat |-------X------------------| Map features |------------------X-------| Quest feature |----------X---------------| Dungeons |---------------X----------| Event system |----X---------------------| City management |----------------------X---|

22-05-14 - Have been working a lot on trying to get the tactical part working with focus on the AI of the enemy movement. Which is a lot harder than I expected. Which is mainly due to the path finding behavior being very limited and not very solid for tile based movement it seems, it have severe problems with directional movement and collision detection. So I have been forced to make workarounds for these things. But believe I have dealt with the main issues. 05-05-14 - Finally finished working on the character sheet, at least for now. And also had to update the character creation with the new sprite lists, so it now works in both. Also did some updates as skills already bought would still show up in the lists. So fixed that as well. So now I have started working on the tactical combat part of the game, and so far made it so rooms themselves are randomly generated. And now im looking to make a generator that can place clutter in the rooms so they will look a bit more interesting and give the player some environment to work with which I hope will make the fights more tactical in the end. 01-05-14 - Been working a bit on my character sheet, so It is now possible to open it from anywhere in the game. Besides that I replaced the skill lists with sprite lists instead which seems a lot better in my opinion, so very pleased with that. 28-04-14 - After a request from the forum about a tutorial for the dungeon generator, I decided to spend some time making that. Which took a bit of time, but it let me go through the code in details step by step and I did find some garbage code that I could remove. However it took some time off from further developing my own generator, but I did manage to integrate it into my game and create an object layer, which will be used for dungeon clutter, ladders and so on. Which will help make the dungeons more unique and give them a more interesting environment. I also managed to integrate a full save and load functionality, so players can exit and re-enter any dungeon that they have former visited should they need to go to town to sell loot or revive a fallen group member and also managed to add depth levels to it so it now support any depth that I would like. Since I integrated it into the game, there will be no more demos of it, as the other ones were developed in separated projects and could easy be turned into demos. Tutorial for Dungeon generator Tutorial for Dungeon Generator 25-04-14 - Yet another updated version of the dungeon generator, with player dummy object and light control. Demo of the dungeon generator version 2.2 - Alpha: Demo of the dungeon generator version 2.2 - Player dummy and light control 25-04-14 - Updated version of the dungeon generator, which allow different sizes and room support. Demo of the dungeon generator version 2.1 - Alpha: Demo of the dungeon generator version 2.1 - Size and room support 24-04-14 - Have been working on new design for a dungeon generator based on a node system rather than path finding. Also it doesn't use rooms the same way as the original, since I didn't really knew how to make it fit the game the way I wanted. But the generator is still in an early stage and still need to add a way to set the size of the dungeons. Demo of the dungeon generator version 2 - Alpha: Demo of the dungeon generator version 2 17-04-14 - While C2 had some unexpected problems due to an update that made my game not work probably, I decided to update the character creation sheet a bit. Also tried Inkscape to make a trial character to test out the program. With some more experience with the program I think it will suit my needs fine. 14-04-14 - Currently working on my random dungeon generator. Which is way harder than I thought, but its starting to work quite well even though there are some minor bugs. Demo of the dungeon generator - Alpha: Demo of the dungeon generator

Wow! That looks awesome!

I like your gamedesign! It seems you have thought very well about what you want to do.

But you have a lot of features, I hope you find the motivation to keep on programming.

Are you doing this game all on your own?

Wow! That looks awesome!

I like your gamedesign! It seems you have thought very well about what you want to do.

But you have a lot of features, I hope you find the motivation to keep on programming.

Are you doing this game all on your own?

Thanks a lot, its actually really really hard to explain the game in whole as there are actually a lot more than I presented here, but hopefully it will be added over time.

Yeah im working alone on it, so it take quite a long time to make as a lot of the feature I have never tried making before. But I hope I can get it to a playable state soon, so I can start test the flow of it.

Really nice Demo on the Generator¬!

[quote:1cwts82v]Really nice Demo on the Generator¬!

Thanks, however im thinking of making a new one as im not really sure that one will fit the game the way I would like it to. and it is really slow

So im planning on trying to make one based on a "Node" system instead. Which I hope will make it faster and more easy to code and expand over time. However at the moment its only on a thought state, but the basic idea is that there are only so many options for how tiles can be connected. So each tile will have a fixed number of nodes or connections points.

This would be all the halls tiles, then there would be rooms etc.

The idea is to choose a random tile as starting point, and from this one connect a new tile for each node.

So next time it goes around it will go through each of these tiles and see what possibilities it have.

And when its done hopefully there will be a dungeon with rooms and so on and there will be no need to use path finding to make it, and that way make it generate a lot faster than now. But as mentioned its only an idea at the moment and might run into some problems I didn't expect, that is normally how it turns out

Wow, what a creative workaround for a random dungeon generator!!

Thanks for taking the time to explain the concept so others can use the idea in their own games!

This is real promising

This is real promising

Yeah that's one of many things I keep an eye out for. My hope is to be able to implement a very basic version, where just the most overall feature works and then slowly expand it. Also trying to just implement more general version of things, so for instant when I create the skills, I will just implement one or two and make it so the rest can more or less be copy pasted based on these. But I have never worked on a project this big before, so its a bit shaky

Also found several things that I would do differently, if I was going to start over. Some of them I try to improve and some I just leave.

But my main issue is organization which is the number one thing that make it hard to code and even though I have spend a lot of time on it, its still the hardest thing to really get working. Its like something is missing, some way of keeping an overview of everything so you can easily see how things are connected in the game, not really sure how to explain it. But think anyone that have worked on big projects would know what I mean. But hopefully i can figure out a good system to do it. One way is to use lots of event sheets, but there are not really any good ways to search through them if you have a lot, but if you use to few, it quickly gets messy as well.

Yeah, i know that from my own experiences. It happens pretty fast, to get stuck in details.

This engine is called Construct, so you have to work like a constructor...first make the building, then fill the rooms hehe

> This is real promising

>

Yeah that's one of many things I keep an eye out for. My hope is to be able to implement a very basic version, where just the most overall feature works and then slowly expand it. Also trying to just implement more general version of things, so for instant when I create the skills, I will just implement one or two and make it so the rest can more or less be copy pasted based on these. But I have never worked on a project this big before, so its a bit shaky

Also found several things that I would do differently, if I was going to start over. Some of them I try to improve and some I just leave.

But my main issue is organization which is the number one thing that make it hard to code and even though I have spend a lot of time on it, its still the hardest thing to really get working. Its like something is missing, some way of keeping an overview of everything so you can easily see how things are connected in the game, not really sure how to explain it. But think anyone that have worked on big projects would know what I mean. But hopefully i can figure out a good system to do it. One way is to use lots of event sheets, but there are not really any good ways to search through them if you have a lot, but if you use to few, it quickly gets messy as well.

This is my experience and my methodology so take this with a grain of salt.

It's better to separate both logic and assets using layout and event sheets.

Basically you put your assets and group them in layouts with your own definitions.

Don't put them all in one layout or worst put them in layouts when they first see any use.

You won't remember which is where after two months working on your game since your game is big.

If it is possible, write the main code and functions regarding those assets on the event sheets tied to them.

This method allow you easy updating and maintenance on both assets and code.

Seperate both events and layouts using folders into global and game.

Global layouts and events are those that you know will be include in many of your other layouts such as player controls, transition effects, UI and others.

Game is obviously one time use such as the title screen, the intro and such.

If you have a lot of events and layouts, you can divide global and game into further subfolders.

Use functions whenever possible.

There is a lot of codes as you say. I believe you will reuse most of the code with little changes in most of your game.

Change them into functions with parameters to change them. This is allow you to code once and then fire and forget for the rest of your development.

Most importantly, if you want to change or improve on it, you need to update the function only and not copy and pasta the same codes everywhere in your event sheets.

I hope you all the best for your game

[quote:2ql5qwcg]This is my experience and my methodology so take this with a grain of salt.

It's better to separate both logic and assets using layout and event sheets.....

I agree with what you wrote, and my game is already organized in such way, otherwise im pretty sure I would have messed it up by now

But my game is split into 4 big areas which more or less could be made into separate games.

1. A strategic map (The screen shot of the map) the player moves around this map and caravans will travel with goods from your city to the other empires cities. This is also where dungeons are created and the global events are visualized like plagues etc. The player can buy land build farms, mines, lumberyards and what else they need. And this is also where the other empires behaviors, political ideas and so on happens. But I could turn this into a game in it self, adding military units and so on. However I have chosen not to do that, at least for now, since it would complicate things to much at the moment.

2. Dungeon crawler this is when the player enters a dungeon, it is a rogue like style of the game, so the player can move around here and explorer, find treasures, encounter monsters and so on. So this I could as well turn into its own game, but have decided that I would like combats to be a bit more exciting than you find them in these types of game.

3. Combat screen is where the player goes when they encounter monster, so each of the characters heroes will be individuals with there own stats, skills, equipment, spells etc. And the same with the monsters, if you meet 8 orcs then there will be 8 individual orcs, that can be shamans, warriors, archers etc. And it will play out like a tactical roleplaying game, like you see it in UFO - enemy unknown, so each take turns doing what they want.

4. City crawler this is when a player enters cities, they actually move around the city and can visit shops. And when in Dragonhelm (The players own city) they can buy shops, like taverns, barracks, Alchemy shops and so on. But also its here where they manage there empire, like wages, how many workers they want working in the different areas, how many councillors they want, guards, military resources, set up trading, handing crimes and reply to local peoples requests and foreign empires that contact the player regarding certain things.

So each area is quite huge and are connected through varies elements, like quests for instant are picked up in a city or a dungeon. But the player have to travel to them on the strategic map, then enter the dungeon and play out the rogue style crawler and fight in the tactical combat. So each part is somewhat complicated and then they all also have to work together and when its all is put together there are just a lot of event sheets and functions etc.

But at the moment the strategic map is working and the player can buy land, build structures, find dungeons etc. Also the Dragonhelm city is working so building can be build, the management of the city, such as hiring and setting wages, setup trading are working as well. Again in a basic version so not all things are taken into account as of now. And im currently trying to make the dungeon crawler to work the way I would like it to, but the connection to the dungeon creator is done, it just need a "Go to layout".

The new dungeon generator is done....or at least the basics

As mentioned in a former post I decided to recreate the dungeon generator based on a node system. And it seems to work quite well. At least its faster than the old one and suits my needs better. However its still pretty early in development, so at the moment it can just generate a dungeon. Next ill need to add the rooms, doors, stairs, encounters and so on. But think the hardest part is done now.

The generator works pretty much as described in the former post. Only difference is that it runs a clean up after its done creating the dungeon so all weird looking things are fixed.

Here is a demo for those that are interested. (Might have to click the generate dungeon a couple of times if it doesn't generate one, not really sure why, as it just restart the layout, but might just be might browser, never really had any huge success running the apps through them. or it might just be a bug some where )

Demo of the dungeon generator version 2 - Alpha: Demo of the dungeon generator version 2

EDIT:

Version with size and room support. (The generating problem was a bug. )

Demo of the dungeon generator version 2.1 - Alpha: Demo of the dungeon generator version 2.1

Looks nice. Hope you can get some progress on it. Looks like a very ambitious project. If nothing else I can say, good luck.

[quote:271o4v5v]Looks nice. Hope you can get some progress on it. Looks like a very ambitious project. If nothing else I can say, good luck.

Thanks Its actually getting along a lot faster than expected as I were very concerned about the dungeon generator in particular. But since the hardest part of it is done, which is the generation it self, which I really feared could make me give up the project after failing it to many times. But it works pretty decent and are easy to maintain and update, so the rest of the things are fairly fast to make.

Added player dummy and light control to it today and it seems to work very well for what I need. So hopefully I can soon get going with the fun part, which are the combat it self

Updated version of my dungeon generator:

Demo of the dungeon generator version 2.2 - Alpha: Demo of the dungeon generator version 2.2 - Player dummy and light control

Absolutely amazing work. The only limits for C2 is truly your own creativity. I'll be checking in on your project daily.

Oh and never regret the large scope of your game. Just as long as you are ready to put years in. There's really no reason your goals won't be accomplished. Surprise the world one day with that epic full release!