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This is a project that I am VERY early in development on. At this point, it's little more than a diversion to keep me sane in between A.I. programming sessions for my other current project. I also plan on this being huge so it's likely to be several months or even more than a year in development. What I've got so far is a 3D movement system that I've added my own refinements to, including support for sloped surfaces (ramps/stairs that go up toward the background), mid-air momentum and a few other touches. I also have a sword mechanic that works in 3D (it's animated sticker materials) and is fun to play with. I also have costumes for most of the main characters. Other than that, I have a rough (very rough) outline of the story and some character costumes. I plan to make the scenery as gorgeous as I am capable: I want every scene to be a spectacle (what I want and what I'm capable of don't always match up but I'll do my best). I intend to rarely, if ever, remove control from the player. To this end, most or all cutscenes will be done using sticker material backdrops (so more story-book than movie) behind the level geometry so that the player can continue to play or can stop and watch the scene play out if they want (there will probably be an actual cutscene at the end, though). The idea is that I want to cater to players who enjoy a story but I don't want to alienate the weirdos who always want to skip cutscenes for some reason. As for the story, you start out as the cliched "chosen one" nearly at the end of his quest, slicing through the enemies like butter. Then, at the end of the first level... you drown in butter. ...like metaphorical butter I mean. There won't be any actual butter. Well, I dunno', maybe there'll be butter, like on toast or something, but you won't literally drown in butter. It's a figure of speech, see? You'll be overwhelmed by the bad guys you've been mowing down. So yeah, the setup is that you're this super-powered unstoppable hero chosen by destiny and all that; no way can you possibly be defeated; and then you're totally defeated. Like you die. The rest of the game will be played as the chosen one's mentor who, despite not having any sort of destiny or chosen one powers and being well past his prime, has to take up the mantel because there's nobody else. He's not much of a fighter so you'll have to build up your skills: think of it like Symphony of the Night where Alucard starts out all geared up but then Death ganks all of his stuff and you have to go get geared up again, except that instead of just losing your gear, you lose your character. I'll go into what I've got of the story in more detail below but I'll throw it into spoiler tags to keep my wall of text a manageable size. I also plan to support 4 players: player one will spawn as the actual character while all other players will just be themselves. Essentially they're there for gameplay but, in the story they're not really there. Later, as other party members join the main character, the other players will spawn as the new characters rather than themselves. I'd love to let players swap in and out of characters but I'm trying to keep gameplay as simple as possible so I probably won't give them that ability: Player 1 will always be the main character, Player 2 will always be the first party member to join and so on. Even though the players will look different and may even wield different weapons, I plan for them to play exactly the same: you won't be at a disadvantage just because you're player 2. Here are some screenshots of the costumes. I think I did pretty good, for the most part, at creating original characters who look interesting: http://www.lbpcentral.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=49832&d=1425197866http://www.lbpcentral.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=49833&d=1425197867 Top: The old man and his wife, Elise (the only character I've named so far). Bottom: The old man as he will appear at various points in the story. http://www.lbpcentral.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=49834&d=1425197868http://www.lbpcentral.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=49835&d=1425197869 Top: The chosen one (aka guy who dies in the first act) and a party member who will join the old man at some point. Bottom: Two dragons. The smaller dragon is the same size as the player and will be a party member, while the larger will be a boss fight you have to do to get the dragons to help you. http://www.lbpcentral.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=49836&d=1425197870http://www.lbpcentral.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=49837&d=1425197871 Top: A snow woman in her normal outfit followed by the same character in an encounter suit used to visit warmer areas. She will be a party member. Also pictured, the villain! Bottom: A shadow. These will be the main enemy the player must fight. I haven't made up my mind whether to keep the fangs or keep it to just eyes glowing in the dark. The screenshot doesn't fully capture it, but the sackboy silhouette becomes visible when the shadow is in motion and disappears into a dark cloud when they stand still; I think it's a really cool effect! I plan on using a lighting tweaker to darken the world a little immediately prior to any shadow attach and return to normal brightness once they've been defeated, as if they're bringing the dark with them. Some time in the past, centuries ago, there was the Great Calamity: an invasion by the shadows. On the brink of defeat, the various races/civilizations pooled their powers and created a force that I am referring to as "Destiny" until I think of a better name for it. Destiny would choose a hero, a "Chosen One" (also until I think of a better name). This hero was granted a mystical set of armor and a sword of light to counter the shadows. He prevailed and the world experienced a golden age of cooperation among the races for many years. Eventually, as always happens, the golden age ended and the various races, though rarely outright warring, ceased working toward mutual benefit and focused more on their own interests. At various times during the centuries, calamities would occur, each preceded by the selection and training of a new chosen one. While the chosen one is selected by Destiny, it is the seers who interpret the will of Destiny and train the chosen one. The current chosen one was selected 7 years ago at the age of twelve and was trained in the seer village until its destruction five years ago. At the time, he was being tutored in history by the old man and his wife, Elise. When the shadows attacked, the old man, knowing that the chosen one was not ready to face such odds, quickly rushed him and Elise away from the village, fleeing to a small valley that he had discovered in his youth to be beyond the seers' sight (though he doesn't know it, this is the location of one of the long forgotten and sealed gates to the shadow realm, which is what interferes with the seers' ability to see it). Since that day, the old man has frantically trained the chosen one, pleasantly surprised to find that the chosen one's natural aptitude for combat has more than compensated for his own lack of expertise. Two months prior to the beginning of the game, the chosen one began his quest, armed with the mystical armor and sword of light that have been given to all chosen ones (these were housed in the home where the chosen one stayed and they took them along when they fled the village). The game begins with the chosen one having tracked down the villain and the shadow gate where he has been building his army. Though he is unaware at this point, the reason the villain has been building his forces here for the past five years without setting out to conquer the world is that he intends to trap and destroy the chosen one so that there will be no one left to oppose him. Seers are a race of humans with special powers to see over great distances and perceive the workings and the will of Destiny. Their raison d'etre is to gather and disseminate knowledge and wisdom to all who seek it and they freely offer training in academics, agriculture, swordplay, etc. to anybody of any race. They remain neutral in conflicts and don't favor any nation or race above another. The only actions they take on the outside world are through the chosen one (note that chosen ones have been selected from every race at various points in history, but a seer has never been selected). Five years ago, the seers were all but wiped out by one of their own who felt that the seers should play a more active role in society. The pacifist seers were ill equipped to deal with the treachery of one of their own and his shadow minions. To this day, nobody knows where his shadows came from and it is greatly feared that these events will lead to a new Great Calamity. Dragons are humanoid reptilian creatures with the ability to shape-shift to full-fledged dragons (assuming I'm able to build a decent dragon creature and make the shape-shifting thing work well). In their humanoid form, a fully grown dragon is much larger than a human, though adolescents are generally closer to human size (as seen with the red dragon in the previous screenshot). Dragons once numbered in the tens of thousands but, following the dragon war, there are fewer than 100 left in the world, most of whom live in a single settlement. Dragons rarely reproduce and, in the 60 years since the end of the dragon war, only five have been born and many believe the race will die out before they're able to replenish their numbers. Dragons once possessed great power with each of their cities housing a dragon stone from which their powers derived. During the dragon war, all but one of these stones were lost (many to the humans) and the dragons' powers have waned as their contempt for humans has grown. The dragon war was a civil war between the dragon nation and dissidents who believed that the dragons' were destined to rule over all of the peoples of the world. The war was devastating to all peoples but none moreso than the dragons themselves. In the latter years of the war, it was found that the dragon stones could be used as weapons of mass destruction. The humans joined the war on the loyalist side but confiscated most of the dragon stones, rationalizing that the destruction the had wrought was evidence that they were too dangerous to be left in dragon hands. Though they promised to return them after the war, do date none of the confiscated stones have been returned. The war was ended when the chosen one, this one himself a dragon, fought and killed the leader of the insurrectionists just in time to prevent the detonation of the last dragon stone. This stone was turned over to the last standing dragon village and has been there ever since. While humans are spread out over most of the known lands of the world and comprise many nations, they are loosely united in what we might term as a confederacy, rarely warring with one another. Because of this and the speed with which humans reproduce, they are the dominant race of the world. Since the end of the dragon war, their power and influence has increased even more, due to the dragons' much weakened position and the humans' acquisition of the dragon stones. The seat of human power and influence is in a floating city which I haven't named yet (can you tell I suck at naming things?). Initially built as a fortress during the waning days of the dragon war (and using the power of the confiscated dragon stones to keep it aloft), it has rapidly grown into the largest human city in the world. Rather than ushering in an age of prosperity for mankind, power has been hoarded by the few who have been able to seize it and a caste system has been implemented. Those in positions of wealth and power have access to what we might term advanced technology: devices that are powered by the mystical energy of the captured dragon stones, while those in lower castes have little. Relations among the various human nations have been extremely uneasy in recent decades: while many nations obtained dragon stones of their own, many more did not and this has led to bad feelings among many. A race of humanoids made of living snow. Their origin is a mystery, though their legends tell that they were created by a goddess who came down from the heavens to flee the tyranny of the other gods. This goddess used her powers to create the first two snow people and a land of snow for them to inhabit. Unfortunately, the humans invaded their land and kidnapped the goddess. One of the snow people followed and was never heard from again. The goddess was destroyed by the humans and the land immediately became inhospitable to the remaining snow man who was obliged to remain high in the mountains to escape the now warmer weather of the lowlands. While the snow people began as gender neutral, they evolved to have males and females though this has nothing to do with their procreation. Instead they reproduce by building new snow people and infusing them with some of their own living snow. Or rather, that is how they used to reproduce until, a few centuries later, they discovered that they had not been producing new living snow; rather they had been dividing and redividing the living snow of the first snowman and placing it in new snowman bodies and they now found themselves at a point where they couldn't divide any further. Though their race is ageless, there never were more than a few hundred of them and over the centuries many have been lost (many during the great calamity). They find themselves in a similar position to the dragons: a dying race. Though their agelessness may mean they will outlive the dragons, the lack of new snow people has led to a stagnant civilization where little has changed in hundreds of years. The old man will visit each of these races (and possibly more) to recruit their aid in fighting the villain and the shadows and to build his power. Much of the preceding will probably not be explicitly mentioned in-game, but it is the well from which I will draw to determine the story of the game and the motivations of the characters. The sword of light having been lost when the chosen one was destroyed, the old man will learn that the dragons have the ability to build a new one but, to complete its power, he'll have to take it to and earn the cooperation of the other races. The chosen one, with his sword of light, easily cut through droves of shadows, but the old man, until he gets his new sword built and powered up, is going to find them to be very difficult opponents, from whom it is often better to flee than to stand and fight. I don't want him to be helpless because that's no fun for the player, so he'll be able to hold his own against a few, but there will be times where you're outnumbered and you'll want to just run. If you actually read all of that, wow. I hope you found it interesting. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. So yeah, that's my next project. Thoughts? Questions? Suggestions?

2015-03-01 10:17:00 Author: Sehven Posts: 2188

Posts: 1077139    Threads: 69970    Members: 9661    Archive-Date: 2019-01-19

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