Looking for inspiration

I've been making a "diablo with spaceships" game, too. For a long time. The trouble is, the more I think about the progression the less I feel like progression adds anything.

For example, movement speed and engine upgrades. I don't want to start off with it feeling too slow and sluggish but there's also a point where it gets too fast and the "just right" feeling speeds are so close together that there's almost no point changing speed at all. The player gets used to a certain speed and changing that means they have to adapt and learn to control it well all over again.

Are you planning to making yours real-time gameplay that requires some skill and reflexes? How do you feel about movement speed?

SirJames said:

I've been making a "diablo with spaceships" game, too. For a long time. The trouble is, the more I think about the progression the less I feel like progression adds anything.

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Progression will probably be the heart of what's fun in my game - but, naturally, it won't be for people who don't enjoy progression.

For example, movement speed and engine upgrades. I don't want to start off with it feeling too slow and sluggish but there's also a point where it gets too fast and the "just right" feeling speeds are so close together that there's almost no point changing speed at all. The player gets used to a certain speed and changing that means they have to adapt and learn to control it well all over again.

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Well, speed isn't a very exciting progression path if it's just movement - but it's certainly going to be a part of my game.

To me, it's not so much about how fast you're moving forward - but more about how nimble you would potentially be in terms of acceleration and probably something like "top warp speed" for an added convenience reward.

That said, it's naturally going to match the ship.

I greatly enjoy rags-to-riches - so think Privateer or something similar here. You start off with a shit ship that doesn't have any conveniences.

On the other hand, the missions or tasks available won't require much - so it's not going to be overly frustrating.

However, such a thing is subjective - and I've done exactly 0% of the work in this way - so far. Talk is cheap. We'll see what I end up with.

Are you planning to making yours real-time gameplay that requires some skill and reflexes? How do you feel about movement speed?

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It's going to be real-time with a tactical feel. The closest to what I have in mind is something like Star Trek Online - only with a bit more player agency and the pace will be faster for the smaller ships.

Still, it's early days - and I don't have much in the way of set-in-stone features.

Yeah, it sounds like exactly what I've been making. Only I'm so lazy it should have been finished years ago.

I DO enjoy progression. But it's all just an illusion, isn't it? It's the whole ordeal about scaling things back to 1:1. In theory you could just make the enemies progressively weaker to give the illusion of progress. Making the player relatively stronger IS making the enemies weaker, so you make them stronger and you're back to 1:1. What's the point?

I was going with rags-to-riches too. I originally started the player with pretty much just an escape pod with just 1 gun, no shields, etc and you'd have to mine asteroids to get strong enough for "zone 2" and then I was thinking about adding an option to skip the early game to where it gets fun when you have all your parts but now I've just scrapped the early game altogether because its not fun to repeat. I pretty much want it to be instantly fun.

Like, in D&D wizards are not fun at low levels, right? After you get Fireball things start picking up. It's probably the most fun around level 7-12. I want to skip the grind but that's most the progression gone. There's a fine line between grinding and progression. What I'm aiming for is it has to be fun to repeat over and over because I'm the one who has to test it! I'm sure it's fun for a new player on their first play but it would really be something special if it was fun enough to keep ME entertained.

Those new XCOM games come to mind. Where they removed numerical hitpoints and give everyone 3 pips of health. Late game you get 5 pips! A powerful passive gives you 1 pip! They really had to flatten things out in order to maintain good tactical balance.

I DO enjoy progression. But it's all just an illusion, isn't it? It's the whole ordeal about scaling things back to 1:1. In theory you could just make the enemies progressively weaker to give the illusion of progress. Making the player relatively stronger IS making the enemies weaker, so you make them stronger and you're back to 1:1. What's the point?

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The point is that progression is fun, obviously?

But progression is best when it involves meaningful choice - which is key.

So, even if you started out at "max power" - you wouldn't be as powerful as if you'd made all the right choices to compliment your playstyle.

I could go on for hours about what I think is "optimal" fun in terms of power curve and reward mechanics, but I don't need another day of mental exhaustion.

You can take pretty much every kind of entertainment - and every game design - and you can enforce some kind of black and white viewpoint upon it, at which stage it will seem pointless.

Games are largely pointless in most ways no matter what, aren't they?

To me, going from weak to strong is fun - but only if it involves moment-to-moment gameplay that's satisfying and if I can feel rewarded by being clever.

It's much the same as starting out in life on a bit of a rough road - which will make "becoming wealthy" more satisfying.

If you start out having everything - then it's much harder to satisfy yourself with more superfluous stuff.

It's a balancing act.

Like, in D&D wizards are not fun at low levels, right? After you get Fireball things start picking up. It's probably the most fun around level 7-12. I want to skip the grind but that's most the progression gone. There's a fine line between grinding and progression. What I'm aiming for is it has to be fun to repeat over and over because I'm the one who has to test it! I'm sure it's fun for a new player on their first play but it would really be something special if it was fun enough to keep ME entertained.

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Low level is my favorite part of D&D That's where your choices are felt the most - and the first ~5-6 levels are the most profound in terms of the power curve.

Once you reach level 10-12 - the journey might as well be over in terms of really feeling it.

Still, D&D is better than almost all other systems in this way.

Yeah, I think meaningful choice is the problem. Other than the weapon types being unique they're just linear tiers. Which weapon type IS the most meaningful choice, but they're really just different bullet patterns.

I guess what it needs is like Diablo3 legendary's orange text. But in D3 you sort of just set it up and forget about it which isn't really that meaningful. I don't want things to end up being a screen of AOE explosions, which is how Diablo games always seem to end up. But if it's too conditional and requires too much concentration from the player they become overwhelming.

I like roguelikes more than RPGs, I think. And RLs are pretty much Diablo. I like action games with progression. I know you like the looter-shooters. There's not really much progression in Destiny 2, for example. It's just the base weapon types. You get a yellow weapon and you're hyped but you'd be fine with a purple. How much does that illusion of progression really add?

I mean, even in a plain FPS game without an inventory, like Half-life, you still explore through the levels, find more powerful weapons, fight progressively harder enemies. That's progression. You don't like Dark Souls because you think it's a grind, but what you don't know is that the bosses do damage based on % of players max hitpoints. It's all an illusion again. Other than the linear increase you get from +1, +2, etc on your weapons it's just the base weapon types again!

So, this is why my game isn't done. I set out to make a space RPG like a 2D Elite and it might as well be a pure action game. I've made all these awesome RPG systems and I don't like them! All they do is bog the player down with bullshit to do before they can get to the real gameplay! xD

I think you're eventually going to get to the same realisation.

Also, I was thinking about adding lots of damage types and resists but there's no point presenting the player with an enemy that requires a type of damage the player doesn't have. So, one option would be to let the player equip a weapon of every damage type but then it just becomes a game of matching square pegs with square holes and not very meaningful.

Most games would just let the player remain viable and do less damage with another weapon type but there's hardly any point setting up bonus damage this way. It's pretty much just a random bonus if the enemy happens to have a weakness. Nothing really planned.

I can't even think of any RPGs where they've made good use of resists. Skeletons having piercing resist and blunt weakness is about the best it gets?

......I've been thinking about more physical based ways of setting up bonus damage. Like, if you think about Monster Hunter you have various weak points to physically target, cut off horns, break wings so they don't fly, cut off tail so they can't tail swipe, etc. I feel like this is more meaningful than comparing numbers. Make it part of the gameplay and not part of the calculations.

I guess what it needs is like Diablo3 legendary's orange text. But in D3 you sort of just set it up and forget about it which isn't really that meaningful. I don't want things to end up being a screen of AOE explosions, which is how Diablo games always seem to end up. But if it's too conditional and requires too much concentration from the player they become overwhelming.

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Diablo 3 has great progression from level 1 to 70. There is no other game in this space that gives you 1 or MORE entirely new ACTIVE skills every single level from start to 60 (and a few beyond that) - but once you realise the overall design paradigm, which you can't really feel until you're max level, it's quite underwhelming.

What it does is that it gives you a ton of toys that are fun to play around with - and it takes a while until you realise that skill configurations aren't meaningful in terms of one being particularly better than the other.

Path of Exile has a lot of active skills too, but they're vastly inferior in terms of personality and the freeform class system makes the power fantasy much less compelling, at least to me.

Obviously, in D3, the legendary skill change design helps a little - but not much, because it doesn't take a genius to figure out that if a weapon compliments a particular skill, then you should probably go with that skill in your build if you intend to use that weapon.

Beyond that, they've utterly ruined the end-game loot hunt by enforcing the sets - because nothing else makes any sense. It more or less normalizes everything and nullifies any impact your skill setup choices might have had.

This is moron-level game design - and completely ruins experimentation and replayability once you've exhausted content.

Another terrible design in Diablo 3 is the loot design. It's a big step back from, say, Hellgate London - which was made largely by the team that invented Diablo.

It's here that it's particularly clear that Diablo 3 was designed by the lead StarCraft guy and not Blizzard North.

What Hellgate London more or less invented was the incredibly rich nature of weapon personality and giving them a character in and of themselves.

Dark Souls is a good example of a game that does a similar thing, only to a much lesser extent. In Dark Souls, weapons behave diferently - and they derive differently from your stats.

As in, they have a personality which makes them that much more attractive to find.

Borderlands aped Hellgate in this way - but somehow managed to make it less involved.

Destiny 2 and Warframe also have weapons with actual personality - and the Exotics in Destiny 2 is one of its best features.

So, Diablo 3 is inferior in a variety of ways.

However, it's utterly unmatched when it comes to the power arsenal. I mean, each character has between 16-24 (or something like that) active skills - and each of those have 6 SIGNIFICANT variations.

That means a single character has an average of 120 active skills to play around with.

That's a ridiculously HUGE number - and they all look great, and they all feel great.

So, in that way, Diablo 3 can get away with its terrible loot design.

I like roguelikes more than RPGs, I think. And RLs are pretty much Diablo. I like action games with progression. I know you like the looter-shooters. There's not really much progression in Destiny 2, for example. It's just the base weapon types. You get a yellow weapon and you're hyped but you'd be fine with a purple. How much does that illusion of progression really add?

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Roguelikes is just a genre. It's all about implementation. All games have good and bad aspects. There's no single game that combines all the best aspects into one formula.

However, there are games that combine a bunch of our favorite features in a satisfying way - and those end up being our favorite games.

Not that much of a mystery, really

Destiny 2 progression sucks, frankly. But Destiny 2 has fantastic moment-to-moment gameplay and it has a very decent amount of visually distinct content. So, I can live without the progression and deep mechanics to a certain extent.

As for yellow versus purple, it sounds like you don't know or understand how Exotics work in Destiny 2.

But it's not my favorite game or looter shooter by a long shot.

I mean, even in a plain FPS game without an inventory, like Half-life, you still explore through the levels, find more powerful weapons, fight progressively harder enemies. That's progression. You don't like Dark Souls because you think it's a grind, but what you don't know is that the bosses do damage based on % of players max hitpoints. It's all an illusion again. Other than the linear increase you get from +1, +2, etc on your weapons it's just the base weapon types again!

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There are several reasons I don't like Dark Souls. The fact that you're too arrogant to understand how much experience I actually have with game design - and how much I think about games before I decide whether I like them or not, is besides the point.

If Dark Souls had a good cooperative implementation, I would probably like it as much as the average Diablo game - maybe even more.

I almost never play strictly progression-oriented games alone - I find that too boring. But I like the shared experience - and Dark Souls has just enough environment variety to make it a fun game in that way.

In other words, I can live with the ridiculously weak time versus reward ratio of the game if I could share it, because overcoming mob patterns can be satisfying when you're sharing it with friends.

I don't need a strong narrative or a compelling arsenal of powers in that situation.

I think you're eventually going to get to the same realisation.

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Well, I don't think we're the same person - so that's probably not likely.

You seem reasonably informed about games and you have your preferences.

That said, I think we have fundamentally different things we enjoy about games - and we have fundamentally different perspectives when it comes to game design.

You have this obsession with competition and you think it, somehow, can apply to two people - in terms of who's the "best designer" or who knows more about the "true way of progression".

Nothing wrong with that.

But there's no one way that's "the best" in terms of game design. It all comes down to personal preferences and past experiences.

If, say, Diablo was your first love - then chances are you're going to be looking for a similar experience for the rest of your life.

Dark Souls clearly did something for you - and given your ego-driven nature - I'm sure overcoming its "obstacles" helped as well. I understand the game design - and I simply don't think the overall experience is worth my time.

But it's certainly a great game if you're into that sort of thing. Just like Monster Hunter World is a great game if you're into that sort of thing.

I haven't actually played Monster Hunter World, so I can't say for sure it's not for me - but there's nothing about it I find particularly appealing. I also happen to despise the asian over-the-top aesthetic.

Arrogance, competition, ego-driven nature? You've got me all wrong, dartsouls!

I don't think I'm important, I don't think anyone here thinks I'm important. I don't exaggerate my abilities. There's no competition in my mind. No ego. I only wish I was competitive enough to be motivated to finish my game just to beat you to it. But I won't. I'll go back to playing games and hating myself for being a waste of potential. No ego there. No pride. I really don't care about anything.

You're the one who turned a perfectly inspirational discussion about game design into a series of personal attacks and judgements. Do you hear me saying anything like "If you weren't so arrogant you'd do it like this" or "It's your ego-driven nature that's responsible for this decision"? That's all you, man.

Honestly, I think we have a lot in common. Diablo came way after Faery Tale Adventure on Amiga. Didn't I say if you had a Amiga that makes us instant best-friends? Stop thinking I'm attacking you. I'm sure if it was 1991 we'd be swapping games on the playground.

I know there's no right or wrong way to do things. I'm just throwing ideas around because I think it might be inspirational. I mean, we're making the exact same game. You didn't know I was making it and just by co-incidence you decided to make the same thing. We're more like two south pole magnets repelling each-other for being too similar. Only I'm the cool one and you're the nerd one.

I don't think I'm important, I don't think anyone here thinks I'm important. I don't exaggerate my abilities. There's no competition in my mind. No ego. I only wish I was competitive enough to be motivated to finish my game just to beat you to it. But I won't. I'll go back to playing games and hating myself for being a waste of potential. No ego there. No pride. I really don't care about anything.

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Not about anything? Sad.

You're the one who turned a perfectly inspirational discussion about game design into a series of personal attacks and judgements. Do you hear me saying anything like "If you weren't so arrogant you'd do it like this" or "It's your ego-driven nature that's responsible for this decision"? That's all you, man.

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I don't know if it's inspirational, but it's interesting

I don't turn it into something - it's still interesting to me. I'm saying these things, because I know you from our past history.

I still like you

But you are what you are - and I don't forget it when people refuse to acknowledge when they're wrong or skirt around false claims.

It's not a big deal - at least not to me. A lot of people are like that. JDR is the king of ego and arrogance, for instance - but I still like (some aspects) of him just fine.

Honestly, I think we have a lot in common. Diablo came way after Faery Tale Adventure on Amiga. Didn't I say if you had a Amiga that makes us instant best-friends? Stop thinking I'm attacking you. I'm sure if it was 1991 we'd be swapping games on the playground.

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I didn't register an attack. Sure, we have a lot in common - but we're still very different in terms of gaming preferences.

I enjoy differences, so I don't think of it as being an attack.

I know there's no right or wrong way to do things. I'm just throwing ideas around because I think it might be inspirational. I mean, we're making the exact same game. You didn't know I was making it and just by co-incidence you decided to make the same thing. We're more like two south pole magnets repelling each-other for being too similar. Only I'm the cool one and you're the nerd one.

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That's kind of you, but I'm almost impossible to inspire when it comes to game design once the vision is in place - except if you can present a great one that I can play

To Whom It May Concern,

Instead of verbal kung-fu, how about getting back to the development lair, and coming up with a concept prototype in a few weeks?
Share it with the community, analyze their feedback, and adjust as necessary.

Yours truly,
The Imaginary Evil Boss Every Indie Needs Now And Then

PS: no hard feelings, just trying to motivate -- else this project will fizzle, just like the majority of up-and-coming indie ideas.

FWIW, I'll tell you the approach I've settled on. The way I look at it, any rpg-like game is built upon a foundation consisting of stats and inventory, and some combat process that references and writes to them. So, I'm focusing solely on getting that data and code organised, along with the proper menu UIs.

It's a bit like working on a D20 program for PnP players. I think that will be a very helpful base, and confront problems that would be applicable to any RPG. Then, whatever graphical and mechanical gameplay I want to build on top, I know exactly what to reference when Actor X interacts with Actor Y in way Z. Approaching it this way, I find it makes it clear what is the next question to be solved, rather than being overwhelmed by possibilities.

Thanks for the input!

That said, I'm no longer really looking for inspiration - that was more in the start of the thread. Sorry for not being clear on that - but I was originally looking for input in terms of what might appeal to an audience.

It's been a while since I established the basic gameplay experience in my head - and while I'm always keen to hear thoughts and ideas, the thread has become more of a place where I update on my progress, both because I enjoy it to a certain extent, and because I've had a few requests to do so.

There are many ways to approach this - and I don't think there's necessarily one particular path that's optimal.

The way I design games, I suppose - is sort of like doing a facial composite based on my own witness account.

I have a very clear vision of the game inside my head - but without the details of lines and wrinkles, and I've always struggled to articulate that sort of thing to others with great precision.

I guess the best way I can describe how I think about my initial designs is that they feel like a dream you just woke up from. You feel it, you can almost smell it, you have vivid images just beyond reach - and you know what it is about, yet you just can't put it into words and if you don't hold on to it and work at realising it, it becomes less and less tangible and the details are lost.

To put it another way, I'm absolutely certain this game exists and can be made quite real - it's just going to take a lot of iterative work until the dream has become reality.

So, step one - which I'm still working on - is essentially getting everything that's required functional on a basic level - so the vision can be realised.

I don't have a particularly structured approach - and I don't want to box myself in with some kind of rigid paradigm.

Right now, it's working well the way I'm doing it. I'm adding one feature at a time to a sandbox environment - and it's a way of demonstrating to myself that I can execute on my vision, and when everything I think is necessary works on a basic level, then I will feel comfortable doing it over from scratch, but with the knowledge that polishing features and refining everything won't prevent me from finishing it.

You could think of it as adding the colors before painting the actual picture.

In the past, I've made the mistake of constantly iterating on a single feature until it's near-perfect and exhausting myself after only a handful.

If there's any sort of order involved, it's more about doing the things that I don't already know how to do first - so the hardest bit of coding can be over.

As for the RPG mechanics, I'm still deciding if I should abstract the character-related stuff and focus on ship progression and abilities. My Crux RPG system was designed for characters and not spaceships - so I can't really use much of it for that purpose.

I'm considering doing the whole system anyway, but not really using much of the character-stuff.

There are many decisions to be made yet - but, for me, design decisions represent the fun part.

Right now, I want to get the hardest parts over with - which would be making shit do stuff with code and have it working with Unity.

Darth Tagnan said:

That said, I'm no longer really looking for inspiration - that was more in the start of the thread. Sorry for not being clear on that - but I was originally looking for input in terms of what might appeal to an audience.

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What exact audience would that possibly be?
If you were looking for something that'd blow my brains off, it would only take peeking in your neighborhood - I just can't wait to see Cold Case Hammarskjöld. I mean, it was impossible for me to be at Park City or Salt Lake City, Utah during january.

Sure - I'm just lobbing in ideas from a general, novice game-design perspective. I'm sure there's no optimal process that suits all cases.

To be clear, it's not that I've adopted this approach as part of the conceptual design approach to the game (I have a pretty clear picture of what I'd like to achieve), but more that it helps me to feel grounded in the way I approach the coding. When confronted with a game engine, I feel somewhat at sea, with all the various options, and different possible ways of doing things. For me, it helps if I can say, "Well, I don't know how to use half of this properly, but I've built and understand my own code for the nuts and bolts of the game, and the rest is rather like a GUI that calls on that foundation."

So, when it comes to putting together the actual gameplay, I know exactly what every event must plug into, within the system that I've built and understand fully.

Anyhow, I'll leave this thread for your updates.

Darth Tagnan said:

Not about anything? Sad.

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I only care about whether you like me.

Darth Tagnan said:

I still like you

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w00t!!

I'm going to start over with the Interface stuff. It just became too elaborate - and I need something simpler. I've found a tutorial for something that looks more appropriate.

I've been slacking off this past week. Hoping to rectify that soon.