Worlds of Chaos: Invasion
Update
- Enemies now act as part of groups, instead of acting as individuals. They take decisions based on their group, and will join fights that their group take part of. They also revive their fallen allies after combat if the whole group was not eliminated. This changes some parts of gameplay where you could just defeat 2 or 3 enemies, retreat and come back and have an easy fight, or where you could pull some enemies at a time and defeat them. Now this tactic will not work, if one enemy sees you, they alert their whole group. Also, enemy's AI were very buggy when you fled combat, and this way of working as a group solved everything.
- There are now unique enemy characters everywhere in the game map, and they talk to the party when they meet you in combat. Every unique character has his own, unique stats and style, leads a group of enemies and has something stupid to say. They are generally pretty strong and will often make the fight revolve around them.
- The story of the game is now more defined, with new dungeons, quests and things to do. What was meant for later in the game is now placed sooner. Also, generic encounters of enemies have been reduced so that most combats have a light "theme" or story to them.
- You can now grind against random groups of enemies that appear after you defeat the base enemies in a map. These enemies give less treasure than normal. Before, every enemy in the map that was killed was dead forever, and if you lacked money and was not able to beat your way through a part of the game, you could be in a very bad position.
- You have to defeat a whole group of enemies to get treasures and experience points. Also, the XP the group gives are adjusted if you fight enemies stronger or weaker than your party. Beating enemies much stronger than your party will give a LOT of XP, and grinding at easy enemies will pay very little.
- Pathfinding is now way faster (no more 0.2 second lag when moving the party) and doesn't have the problems is had before (sometimes characters took weird and obviously sub-optimal paths.)
- A bunch of new powerful spells like lightning strike, inferno, poison cloud, healing circle have been added, as well as summon spells (wolf and bat) and others.
- The characters now take positions in three ranks for exploration : rogues take place in the middle rank so they are much less targeted at the beginning of combats, and this gives them way better survivability.
- Almost all terrain textures have been redone with a better style.
- The base UI has been made smaller.
- Traveling to discovered travel points don't use Travel orbs anymore, it's free.
- Life orbs and party resurrection is now less expensive.
- The game is generally less punishing of mistakes, to compensate for difficulty added by enemy groups working together and reviving their allies.
- You can now see in the minimap the direction the camera is pointing at, so it's way easier to orient yourself.
- Other minor things that I did not think of yet.
There are two changes I made, but that I didn't keep :
I transfered the project to Unity 5.6.5, but doing so made the the environments (terrain and grass) look awful, and there were terrible bugs with weapon particles. So I reverted back to unity 5.4.5.
Another thing I wanted to do was make combats a different part from exploration. What I mean is that you explore the world like in JPRGs, with one character (the leader) and when you encounter enemies, you start as a combat against a group of enemies. I did it for many reasons : simplify my program (it's awfully complex and hard to work with, even if I always try to make things simple... to many simple things still make a complex network), to avoid players using the cheap tactics that I describe previously, and for other reasons. I didn't keep it because it broke immersion a LOT, but really, it was not good. Yet it was this change that made me use groups of enemies rather than placing individuals, and I'm really, really happy with the change it does to the game, solves the main problems I had.
Overworld map finished, more dungeons are ready, story completely created.
I post this to give news on the game, but it is not ready to play, unfortunately. I really cannot publish an update right now, because the game is kind of a mess. And after these, I need to make balance tests. One of the biggest problems with this game is that it is so long to make tests... every run of the game takes 15-20 hours. Each change I do takes a while to test, so I only do these test after many changes and a lot of work.
The current, unpublished messy version of the game I have, has a bit too low XP, and way too much money. Like, you can buy everything you want really fast in the game. I really want to make money valuable, and that finding more makes players excited for what they can buy, and lacking money is a good thing, looking forward to buy what they want for their party. This balance is really hard to achieve, because adding a dungeon means adding treasures, XP to what players had in another version, so... things need adjusting after every change. One dungeon can be enough to give players all they wanted, and not look for treasures as much as they did before.
I will publish a new version as soon as I will have something balanced and complete until at least the 20th hour of gameplay, or maybe final. The final game will be 23 or 24 hours long. Finishing at this point should not be long. It will be a first "final" version, meaning that changes/improvements will still be made, but players will at least be able to play the whole game.
What's next...
The next things that will most probably get in the game are things that will improve the contents, gameplay and fun in the first 14 hours of the game. All of these will be inserted to replace parts of the beginning of the game. It might mean that players already into the game would be better off restarting... but the new contents will make it worthwhile. I played the whole game like... 30 times, probably more? And I'm not even tired... ok maybe a little. :P But it's highly replayable, in my opinion. Just try a new group...
1) I will add a bit of fun and diversity to combats by placing powerful named, unique enemy characters/bosses. These will talk when entering battle, to challenge, insult or taunt the party characters, and for some of them, when they die. Later in development process, they will probably have voice added... like most of the main dialogs in the game.
I aim for 6 to 8 unique characters of each main enemy groups, maybe 10 for goblins. 2 to 5 for side enemy groups. They are very fun for me to make, and quite easy too with the engine I programmed.
These characters are 100% sure to give their (quite good) equipment for loot, and sometimes, with a special item, that I describe later.
2) A very special, magical item that you can buy will let you absorb magical energies that flow in special places around the game world. Every magical absorption will imbue this magical item with new powers that will improve the whole party.
3) I will redo some parts of the beginning areas to have more places of interest. I want the game world to be packed with interesting things to do and explore, and less generic combats. Maybe it will be a bit crazy and unrealistic, but it's more fun like that. Fun beats realistic.
4) More diversity in enemies. Spitting spiders, more undead types (with elites/uniques), slimes, etc.
5) Possibly 2 or 3 additional dungeons. Maybe even more.
6) Making the main quest advance much earlier in the game. Taking what was for later and making it at the start, then it continues for the whole game.
7) Character classes. But non-restrictive character classes, that only improve your power. Not sure I'll call it a "class". They will give bonus stats, skills/passive powers unique to that class, and 1 or 2 bonus spells, automatically memorized at all time (added to ordinary memorized spells). These classes will be learned by going training in village and towns, and have quite a high cost in silver. Each 5, 6 or 7 levels (I'll decide later), you can have a new, additional class. They might have requirements in traits, stats, skills and levels.
Not sure yet I'll add these though. Like... 84% chances.
8) Talking to random characters in town, other than quest givers. These will talk to you about interesting things that are happening/happened in the area. I'll avoid random babbling about their lives, because... I just don't like it in games. It's useless and take you off the track of the game story, and reduce the intensity of gameplay. It's annoying to have to go through 10 random people to get 1 info relevant to what you're actually doing... in my opinion. And it's my game, so.
9) More quests... obviously.
10) Magical objects that give special powers to characters. Often dropped by unique characters and found in special treasures. I'll try to make them interesting and unique, and make their discovery a special, rare event. Each character would have 3 slots for these items.
That's about all... These are all fortunately rather easy to integrate in the game. Most of the "new" systems are very similar to what I already programmed in the game, almost copy/paste with small modifications. A challenge of adding all these in the game is balancing enemies with all the added power and all. Every time I add or change things at the start of the game, everything after it becomes too easy or too hard. Changing all of these is sure to throw everything off balance, but I'll correct it again after these changes. I hope I can make these changes quite rapidly, too, and in a single update... to avoid re-balancing all the game many times. These kind of changes are those that take the least time to make.
And I think these will be the last things I'll add to the game, other than contents at the end of the game and graphical/sound/art improvements, added spells, skills, equipments and enemies... and things I already said I would add. And bug corrections, and general improvements.
And keep in mind, I promise nothing. These are what I plan to make, but plans change (and mine change a lot).
New face styles from a recent update (video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngqluwXm00
What I'm currently working on... (environment graphics)
These last days, I've improved the way the natural environments look. I've realized that for terrain ground, it's way better to have 1 huge texture (2048x2048 or 4096x4096) with a lot of variations inside it, than many textures that you mix in the game engine, for a lot of reasons... simplicity being the main one. Simplicity in everything is very important, and it's something I realise more and more. The more complex things are, the longer it takes to modify or improve them, and that can be exponential. And it just looks much better with very little effort.
With that, I also want to make more variations in environments. I will make 5 (maybe more) different outdoor "styles" for the game. I use a generator I programmed to help create the maps, and each map has a style, from which the generator create environments automatically with what I give it... if that makes sense. I choose what goes where, and it generates the map with the style it was assigned. Creating good looking maps is really fast and easy with that tool, but making interesting maps can still take some time. This generator is great to create good-looking generic environments, but I still want to make each area unique.
I also want to make the game more graphically cohesive. I admit that I bought models from the unity asset store, but this makes a mess of the project, with random folders all over the place and objects, textures everywhere... it's not fun to work with that. And not all the styles are working well with each other, but I only use the best of what I bought and what I produced myself and with the help of 2 graphic artists I hired. I want to do 2 things : make the graphics styles as unified as possible and make most graphics unique to my game. I'll probably keep some of the one I bought, but I'll certainly modify those that don't fit that well with the rest, that are placeholders for the moment.
I'm becoming a way better graphic artist than I was, by working with graphics so much... it's something I was very bad when I began. I've studied a lot of recent games graphics to see what was good or not, and how they did it. One great example of what I like the most and would like to resemble is Magicka 2. Simple and beautiful. I know that I will not be able to do as good as that, but I can learn from it or use it as reference material.
Well... that's it for now. I go back to working on the game. The main reason I didn't do these kind of "updates" is that they take time to do, and they take me off the game itself. But I guess they are useful to connect with you, the players and interested gamers, so I'll continue them.
Update with more character customization and major bug repaired
This update has 2 important things improved/corrected. First, I have added a lot of customization options for party characters : you can now change eyes by combining eyes and eyebrows textures, you can combine 2 hair styles (front and back hair), and you can change eye colors. I am working on adding more options and making them look better. This is just the beginning of character customization.
Also, I corrected a major bug with the tutorial, where every time you close the game you had to redo the tutorial again. If you still experience this problem, just press ctrl-alt-4 in the start menu.
This update took more time than it should have, sorry about that. I need to explain why it took so much time... in fact, I'll explain why the game is advancing at a slower pace than it should. First, if you don't already know, I'm alone in this project. It is also the first game project I made using Unity, in fact... I transfered it from another engine to unity (from Mogre, for those interested). I did not program this game specifically for unity, so there is a lot of programming that is kind of.. unnecessary. But getting rid of it would be very, very long and hard, and it would riddle the game with bugs. I would have to completely redo it from the beginning.
This made the program very big, heavy and complex. Changing even small things can be tedious. I would say it is well programmed, I just made it way too complex, with over-complicated systems. Also, I did not realize, at the start of the project, that making the game party based without changing from exploration to combat states (like old Final Fantasy games) but always moving each member of the party, all the time, with no difference from moving around to combat (like Dragon Age, Baldur's Gate, etc.), would be such a pain. Artificial intelligence, combat, map creation, game object creation, almost everything is way more complicated. I could only know it by doing it, I guess. So the game has like 3 times the amount of programming it would need if it was made another way.
And... I recently tried to restart the project... by keeping the good code, getting rid of the excess. I wanted to try to see if it would be long. It would work great... but it would be too long indeed. I've almost finished this version, it would be stupid make another one. I'll keep these changes for the next games. That is, in part, why it took a while for the update.
I want to say this : This project is extremely important to me. I will never give it up, even if it takes a while to complete. I'm not always very productive, and sometimes life gets in the way... but I will finish it, I promise. And it will not be a rushed, botched finish. I am a perfectionist, maybe to a fault... but I need to be proud of this game to call it finished. I love this game, it is a passion project... and I owe it to those that bought it to finish it.
And again, to everyone who are patient with me to complete this game... Thank you.
New update
- There is now a small window that will show the player what actions have been registered for the party characters. This was asked quite a few times, but I hadn't found a good and elegant way to do it... now I have.
- In party creation, the player has a complete preview of the archetypes and saved characters when he passes the cursor over their buttons, it even shows their appearance, before he decides the one he wants to add to the party.
- The small help window (for spell and skills descriptions) now follow the cursor.
- Ranged characters no longer back off when you are close to them (this was annoying if they went too far).
I want to thank BigRowdy, Markus and Kloodge for their help to find the problems in the game and their ideas on how to improve it. It is really appreciated.
Dave
Update with completely redone tutorial
Last week, I finally thought of a good way to make a tutorial that would make the players lose their old ways of playing and get them into the "Worlds of Chaos" way of playing. It is a step by step tutorial that blocks most options at the beginning and unlocks it in a certain order to teach the right way of playing and help understand the system, for every part of combats (spell use, targeting, injuries, combat stats, etc.)
I just finished integrating this new tutorial to the game, so it is surely not completely right yet. I think it is a bit text-heavy, but at least it explains a lot, and everything in this tutorial is useful to know.
Recent updates
I've redone the beginning of the game and augmented the number of starting spells and skill points for characters, making them stronger and most importantly, more diversified and unique. I've created 6 new archetypes for a total of 16, and redone/improved the 10 already created. I improved the party creation interface, simplified the process of party creation and made it more clear what you need to do. I've also given the possibility to skip tutorials, which can be undone in the options.
I realized the starting of the game is really important for players to get into the game and it must be very fun right from the start, with the adrenaline of not being sure to survive even the first fight. You can always resurrect with a penalty that is not too punishing. But the easy and beginner friendly (but not really interesting) start I made has now been remade to be quite challenging. The style of the game is "challenging"... so, prepare to suffer ;-)
Update with improved bestiary and some bugs solved
The update also solves the bug where you could sometimes get quest rewards more than one time.