on what might've been...

I've intentionally been coy about a lot of the actual mechanics of the game because, honestly, they have been in flux across some very different states. I've touched on this a little bit in prior posts, but I'm going to go over what I think of as the game second's big revision, and probably one of the more interesting times in its development. Mostly because it's neat to talk about, but also as proof of concept of an idea I still want to explore later on.

the premier of an actual enemy design!

As I've mentioned before, it all started off as a beat-em-up, became a JRPG homage, and then switched engines for the last time, and became a platformer. The platformer idea seemed like a great entry into into game development, eschewing my increasingly complex goals to focus on something I might ACTUALLY get accomplished. Also, as a gamer myself, I just love the genre. They were my first type of games, and my fondness for them has lived on. This isn't a new sentiment in the indie scene, I understand, but I just view this as a testament to the creative brilliance of the guys and gals making these old games back in the 90s.

It was supposed to be simple. Rudimentary physics (as you can see in one of the first post's videos, you can push objects), have friction and gravity--basic stuff. Jump on top of enemies heads to dispatch them, collect spirals for points. It would have slower, more deliberate pace, as you'd die in one hit (unless you got a shield item), and could collect extra lives. The concept got a little more complex when I introduced save points, and special stages, but I tried to keep things within the realm of a Super Nintendo-era platform game.

...and thus this mock was born.

During this process, I was naturally going through tons of ideas, and a lot of the previous concepts from its different iterations across various genres still lingered around on the drawing board. More specifically, the RPG ideas still floated around like vengeful ghosts, and as I started getting more experienced with GameMaker, I started figuring out ideas, as well as discovering free-to-use code to build off of. The platformer parts were solid, and there was enough there to make a full--albeit simple, game--art assets not included. But I started getting bored with one of the game's core mechanics--combat...

I had no intention of scrapping all the work I'd put into the plaform parts, though. So, the new idea would be to try and implement a turn-based battle system into the game fluidly. It didn't take too long before I had the ground work for the game flow. You would still navigate the levels as per before, but when you bumped into, or jumped on an enemy, you then switched into the battle system.

As for the battle system itself, it was to be very simple, as you can see in the mock-up above. For your options, you have the Spiral, which opens your MAGIC menu, the Sword, which lets you choose a target to ATTACK with your currently equipped weapon, and a Box, which would open up the ITEM menu. Besides that, it was planned to be fairly standard turn-based fare. After fights, you would accrue money, which you could use at shops to buy new items, and equipment.

I decided that there would be no character levels. The game would have RPG-like stats, but they would be adjusted solely by the items you would find, and equip throughout the game, or by special events you encountered. These core stats were:

-  LIFE (how many hitpoints you have before you hit 0 and die)

- MAGIC (you would acquire "spells" through the game you could cast for specific point costs. As you explored the game and found floating spirals, they would both give you more magic points to cast with, and new spells as you hit certain numbers of spirals found)
    - STRENGTH (how hard your character attacked a target)
   - DEFENSE (how much damage is negated when attacked by enemies}

To increase these stats, you would buy/find items and equip them. You would have 4 equipment slots:

1. WEAPONS - You use these to hit things with. Adds STR.
2. HOODIES - would grant HP, and sometimes defensive perks against certain things like elemental damage. May also recolor, or slightly alter appearance of player sprite.
3. ACCESSORY - odd-ball items that gave extraneous, sometime useless, or just quirky side effects.
4. FEET - Would grant you passage across different types of terrain, alter jump-height, as well as affect how you approached combat. What I mean by that is allowing the platforming to come back into play. Once you reached a certain point (not terribly long into the game) you would get your first pair of shoes that would allow you to jump, Mario-style, on your enemy, dispatching them without going into the battle system. You would instantly get the same money amount from your kill.

unused menu art

I wasn't trying to kill off the reason for using my battle system when I made this decision, but diversify my options. This first pair of boots would come into play sometime after the end of the first chunk of similarly-themed level, or "world." The game encourages a Metroid-esque amount of exploration and backtracking, so I anticipated players coming back and forth between the worlds. Having to grind through the same battles over-and-over is tedious (especially since your incentive to grind out progress wouldn't be the same as in a more typical RPG, what with levels to acquire.)

There would be a further caveat to all of this though, and that is terrain. The game registers various ground types in its mask data and character hitboxes. For example, take a look at this little horned-fellow you've seen a couple times now.

Those horns aren't just aesthetic; If you jumped on his head, you would lose health. If you had the aforementioned jumping shoes, you would still take damage, and go into battle. You would have to wait until you found a pair of shoes that specifically allowed you to walk and jump on spiky surfaces to utilize the quick fights, in this case. The last element to this is that, even if you had the appropriate type of footwear to quickly dispatch your foe, if you couldn't physically land on its head for the jump, you would still go into RPG fight mode. This would allow me place bosses in, say, a narrow corridor, forcing you towards the more strategic fight to mix things up, or because I wanted to show off a particular monster design, or because I just wanted to be a dick.

her face is all creepy because, you know, magic.

This is post quickly got out of hand, and I'm not even done.

Seeing as this has been a much larger effort than I anticipated finding, cleaning up, and arranging all of this old art, I'm going to leave this last screen-shot of the most current version of the game's battle system before it got scrapped. You can see at this point that the perspective had shifted (this is important, but for that's for another post), the GUI has changed completely, and now you can have fights versus multiple opponents!


Alright, I'll finish this retrospective later with some sketches of enemies, equipment, and some spells.