Category Archives: Game Design

Dreamblazers Devlog: Week of March 3, 2014

Last week’s achievements

* Restructured some hidden stats in a more logical manner
* Set up various aspects of the equipment system
* Preliminarily finalized stats for 201 (yes, 201) fashion-based “status effects”
* Implemented ~40 of those status effects

Current focus

The equipment system followed by battles.

Weekly goals

* Finish off implementation of the remaining fashion effects and test all of them
* Write flavor text for at least 60% of the fashion effects
* Begin testing battles: damage formulas, battle text, etc.
* Order new computer

Comments

Even though—no, because it’s fully optional for the player, my fashion system ranks high as one of my favorite ideas. At best guess I’d say I thought of it in late 2012 or early 2013, but in any case, it’s certainly my newest large-scale idea.

One uncommon element of Dreamblazers that I’ve had in mind since at least 2010 is that equipment never becomes irrelevant; even starting equipment can be used until the end of the game. Like so many of my ideas, this was inspired by Pokémon (with a huge hat tip to The World Ends With You). The average player simply blasts through the game with their favorites, but a competitive player like me will reset twenty times until that Bulbasaur from Professor Sycamore has the right nature.

I aimed to appeal to both. A casual player never needs to look at a character’s outfit—and yes, I’m calling my equipment screen the “Outfit” screen to stress this point. The serious player, though, might look at Astrid, see that all of her stats are great but none are exceptional, and give away her Trailblazer Tunic, Agility Anklet, and Enchanted Earrings to, respectively, Power-centered, Speed-centered, and Magic Power-centered characters.

Could I do more, though? Could I create a middle ground between ignoring outfits and having the most intense optimization experience since Monster Hunter? Could an equipment screen be… fun? Maybe so! Each piece of clothing has at least one theme, like Cool or Playful, and piling on similar clothing gives the character a theme and boosts her Style stat. If you give her two or more themes, some have natural synergy, such as Sporty + Swimmer or Girly Girl + Princess, while others oppose each other, like Innocent + Military or Everyday + Formal, increasing or decreasing her Style.

In the end I sifted through 433 theme combos and wound up with 201 ways for players to change their Style. My hope is that seeing status effect names like “Disco Knight” or “Ribbons, Lace, Angry Face” or “Sparkles and Swag” pop up as you change clothes will be as fun as opening the menu in Dragon Quest IX and seeing what myriad of new titles Stella would shower on you.

Dreamblazers Devlog: Week of February 10, 2014

Last week’s achievements

* Art feedback round 1 sent for Autumn, Hikaru, Kylie
* Created structure for fashion style structure
* Finalized equipment stats and wrote flavor text for: Ribboned Hat, Swimline Single, Turmoil Tunic (?)**, Adamanvine Armlet, Sidelopped Skirt (?)**, Star Sneakers, Customized Coat, Kittyara, Swimline Split, Synergy Mail, Alternating Armwear, Songwoven Skirt, Silent Sandals, Mystery Manacle, Randomizing Polish
* Know how to set up all passive abilities involving changing stats, preventing status effects, or inflicting status effects
* Preliminarily finalized damage formula
* Set up stat growth formula (I’d already Excelled out what it was before last week, just hadn’t implemented)
* Wrote area flavor text for: Natsuki Crater Forest, Impini Mountain Base, Impedi Wooded Base, Winny Spring, Deltaru Tri-Port, Seaside Slime Cove, Den of Kobolds and the Unicorn, Unknown Village, Miharu Capital Palace, Boomerang Sanctuary, Forbidden Peak, Secret Sylvan Stage, Mermaids’ Getaway, Spring Lake Valley, Spring Lake Deep Glade, The Royal Tail Fin

**These are parts of the names

Current focus

If any more character design drafts come in, I’m very likely to pounce on them so that my artist Flora and I can “parallel process” since we do different things. Other than that, nailing battles will consume me for the foreseeable future.

Weekly goals

* Push ahead toward the current long-term goal of ironing out the basic balance of battles: how many attacks to end average battle, how many hits can squishy vs. tanky vs. squishy-but-regenerating playable characters survive, how much damage will status effects do, etc.
* In the here and now, that means finalizing various formulas and the relative strength of different techniques and magic
* Send art feedback for at least half of any next rounds of characters if they come in
* Might need to look into buying a new computer…

Comments

Last week was my first time trying out the magic of written goals. I overdelivered on art feedback and far overdelivered on flavor text, but only half-delivered on passive abilities and overestimated how much I could do in a week with battle balance. Not a problem, though! Because of what I decided to focus on, I did set up a few battle necessities, like stat growth and initial equipment. It also had a natural segue into implementing the first half of the style system since I was already setting up equipment.

And, anyway, I’d always intended to aim higher than I believe I can achieve, then adjust along the way. In this case, I know I can set higher expectations than before for what I can do with text and feedback, but with the battles it’s more of a long-term goal with several checkpoints. Definitely not gonna go all Twilight Sparkle here and create a checklist of things I need to create a checklist, though!

Seven Types of Difficulty in Games

Of all the Let’s Players out there, raocow stands out as one who gives fun, wacky commentary, but also has an eye for design and brings up insights on level structure, aesthetics, and the creative use of technology. He certainly isn’t out to trash or make fun of the games he plays, either, which are my least favorite kinds of LPs, and he mostly plays rom hacks and indie games that tend to put into perspective how indie developers (including individual game designers) can utilize ideas that bigger developers wouldn’t, ranging from games that are too hard to sell to a mass audience to games like Psycho Waluigi, a platformer in which Waluigi gains psychic powers and sets out to conquer the world.

The video he posted today was one of those hard levels—was it ever. Above all, I watch raocow because he’s a jovial, positive dude, so when he titles one of his episodes “Unraocow video” then I know we’re in for something brutal. I’ll say first that I’ve loved watching the rest of New! Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island by YoshisFan. I’m not writing this as an attack (and I doubt he’d see it anyway). I’d say YoshisFan has done great work on a wonderful Yoshi’s Island fan game. I enjoyed Artoon’s Yoshi’s Island DS, but I’d take his game over it any day.

This one level, though, goes over the line—and, as always in my blog, the question is why and how. Most people who dislike the level would give the simple answer “it’s too difficult,” but I want to break down what that really means. Writing about “legitimate” and overbearing difficulty has been on my backburner and today just brought it to the forefront. Here are seven types of difficulty found in video games:

  • Challenging enemies (enemy overload, powerful individual enemies, large sprays of bullets)
  • Changes to game mechanics (altered gravity, slippery floors, wind)
  • Gauntlet length (boss rushes, Dr. Wily’s fortress in any Mega Man, individually long levels)
  • Harsh punishment (one-hit deaths, redoing half an hour of gameplay)
  • Necessary memorization (complex tracks in racing games, speed sequences in action games)
  • Precision movement (tight platforming, stealth sequences)
  • Time limits (literal time limits, a Tetris screen filling up)

    • Past the jump we'll find out how the types of difficulty are used. Also, more pictures. You like pictures, right? I mean, everyone who plays video games should. No offense to text-based RPG players, by the way. I love them myself.

    Learning How To Design Video Games: A Matter of Play

    Fill in the blanks: to learn how to make great _____, you should study great _____.

    Books. Movies. Food. Music. Buildings. Businesses. Art. Products. Games.

    Somehow this simple universal truth escaped me a while back when I went on a kick of gobbling up books on game design. After reading them, I can say in honesty that no matter how well-written, how witty, how creative, or how otherwise excellent the books were, the only thing they helped me to understand was that I already knew far more than I believed or than I was even prepared to believe.

    Books about game design can help a certain audience, I’m sure, but that audience is not gamers who have played so much that they could put together a list of their top five hundred—not any more than a book about chess tips would help someone who’s already sunk two thousand hours into playing it. Diehard gamers know what works and what doesn’t through the experience of having played it all, and experience far trumps book knowledge.

    The mission of the diehard-gamer-turned-game-creator is to use the design techniques they’ve enjoyed and avoid the ones they’ve disliked. Of course, they still need to make their own games with their own vision. The idea is to draw on the internal logic of game design techniques, not the external trappings of setting—but that’s another blog post for another day.

    The Gauntlet Gift of Always-Full Health

    Every gamer recognizes the healing room signal: a showdown awaits. No excuses, only battle. What if every room heals the characters? Despite their many differences, Xenoblade and Ys feature automatic health regeneration anywhere in the world, shaping their every enemy. When developers expect that a player will generally be at about 40% HP, they’re more likely to design enemies who can be defeated by characters at about 40% HP. Guess how this works when a player will generally be at 100%!

    When heroes always have their full health, villains always use their full strength. Keeping players’ heroes in optimal condition is like throwing down a gauntlet: it announces that everything, everywhere, knows how to kill them and will cut loose trying.