Category Archives: Indie Development

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!

Dreamblazers Devlog: Week of February 3, 2014

Last week’s achievements

* Character profile and direction sent to Flora for Astrid, Autumn, Hikaru, Kylie
* Art feedback round 3 sent for Celty

Current focus

Gameplay, gameplay, gameplay.
And art and flavor text as I have time or desire.

Weekly goals

* Iron out 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 do status effects do, etc.
* Get at least ten passive battle abilities functioning properly
* Send art feedback for at least two characters out of Autumn, Hikaru, and Kylie
* Write descriptions for ten or more equipment pieces

Comments

Over 1000 hours in Pokémon X and Y is a clear sign that I value battles in an RPG. It’s no different for my own Dreamblazers! Even though exploration is right there in the title and is absolutely crucial, I still believe that if I can’t get battles right, nothing else matters. Not to me, anyway. =)

The Indie Developer Seizure: From 2013 to 1997 With Love (and Reciprocity)

While creating wiki templates for my upcoming RPG, I used sample information from my character Celty. I could stop there and ask a question I’ve thought about idly: I spotlight my characters like Final Fantasy VI or Tales of Vesperia spotlighted theirs, where each of them has shining moments and a fan could make a dozen compelling cases for who the “true” hero is, so why is Celty my “default” character—my template? Is she my favorite? No. Is she my strongest hero? No, although she’s up there. Is it because she’s playable for a longer time than any other character? We’re getting warmer, but then why is she the first playable character—the Terra or Yuri Lowell to others’ Celes and Estelle Sidos Heurassein and Rita Mordio?

I found that my answer lies in the heart of battle my history. (Sorry, Ryu!) Most of Celty’s modern profile was created within the past three years, but when I decided to add a Trivia section about her past, I set myself on the path to uncovering ancient secrets. At first I meant it only for simple asides: her gameplay abilities were designed with speedrunners and single character challenges in mind, she was originally imagined as a warrior mage and not a martial artist, and her name predates Celty Sturluson from Durarara!!.

On that last point I paused. Celty was one of my longest-surviving characters, going back at least to 2000 or 2001 when I first had the crazy notion that I could make an RPG one day—but could I find out how long she’d been with me? I dug into old documents. The truth I found shouldn’t shock you (hint: it’s up in the blog post title), but it shocked me: I’d created Celty as early as December 1997. I had made her a legendary NPC in the computer RPG creation tool Blades of Exile. She was not only “one of” my longest-surviving characters, but the third longest-surviving.

Celty is my “Bulbasaur”: a character who wasn’t my first creation but will always be #1 in the Pokédex.

If that was the end of the story, it wouldn’t be worth mentioning. The real end of the story is that I found epiphany and revelation and truth. I dug into my past to answer a single question and walked away with an answer to a second and infinitely more important one.

Click to read the rest of my descent into indie insanity.

The Creative Advantage of the Indie Game Developer

If Castlevania, Super Mario Bros., and Pokémon never existed, could they be invented from scratch today?

Game development is, for both better and worse, not what it used to be; the monetary costs and time costs to create Grand Theft Auto IV are lightyears apart from Street Fighter II. When games are Hollywood-level productions with Hollywood-level expenses, one misstep can sink a company—and so, to the best of each company’s abilities, with every statistic available to them, their number crunchers need to determine a priori whether their games will sell based on the history of their series and comparable series.

In the modern world, big game developers craft their games from market statistics. Some gamers love it (“give me bigger and better”) and others hate it (“give me something original”), but either way, developers do that because, in a real and literal way, they can’t afford otherwise. Market statistics can’t breed innovation, however; no one can create the future by replicating the past. When the game industry was still young, companies needed to pioneer new ideas because they had no comfort zone of existing trends and bandwagons to follow.

Konami could not have created Castlevania in this millennium. My pitch as the creator: Simon Belmont, a descendant of vampire hunters, battles Dracula and the undead with the Vampire Killer, a holy whip passed down over countless generations. My response as the publisher: a guy fights Dracula with a whip? Nobody buys into characters with whips unless they’re Indiana Jones. Give this Belmont guy knives like in Blade or guns like Resident Evil and House of the Dead. Make him more generic because then he’ll be a safer bet.

See, now Bomberman kind of looks like Master Chief or, like, Iron Man. So he'll sell better in the USA, right? Right?

The scary side of appeasing market trends. 6-3-2012 update: would you believe that I wrote all of the above without even remembering that Konami rebooted Castlevania? I only had their ill-fated Bomberman Act Zero in mind as a point of comparison.

What does all of this have to do with indie gaming, anyway? You'll have to click to find out!

Game Creation 001: Don’t Sweat the Similar Stuff

And it’s all similar stuff. I treated the Grand List of Role-Playing Game Clichés like an unchecklist when I spent my time paper-plotting my dream RPGs at the age of sixteen: anything I thought up that I found on the List needed to hit the cutting room floor. Years later, I discovered TVTropes—and if I had treated that like an unchecklist, no game on the planet would remain.

I’ve heard an academic theory that, from a satellite view of screenwriting and literature, they only offer two types of stories: a hero takes a journey or a stranger comes to town. “Hero” is shorthand for “main character”, but I won’t break that saying down further because I don’t devote my time to movies and novels. I devote my time to something far more interesting and this is my theory:

Video games only offer two types of gameplay: Mario and Pokémon. Either circumstances control the hero or the hero controls circumstances. Either a big bad dragon rolls into town and captures a princess, ruining the hero’s peaceful life, or the hero has had enough with peace and sets out to challenge the world and be the very best—like no one ever was. Dragon Quest vs. Etrian Odyssey. Mega Man vs. Street Fighter. Castlevania vs. Monster Hunter. Tetris vs. any sports game ever made.

I prefer the higher jumps and comedy coward stylings of Luigi myself, but objective credit goes where it's due to the icon of gaming. I can't in good conscience give Pikachu the nod over Eevee, though! Who can resist those eyes or its seven Eeveelutions?

The best-selling video game franchises epitomize the basic building blocks of any title in the industry: the two possible goals and roles of the player.

No clever text this time. Let's get inspired.