Grinding or not grinding, that's the question!

In the photo above, Gilda and Leon sleeping "head to head" :)

I was hoping to announce the start of the beta pre-order for my fantasy RPG "Loren The Amazon Princess" but alas, I am going to delay it by a few weeks. I'm hoping by mid of February to have the full chapter 1 finished.

Below some screens of the vendor (WIP) and the battle with a 99% final layout:

See the full gallery on Posterous

What's left ?

You might ask what exactly is missing? The biggest part of the game is done, but there are a lots of small things missing. To be clear I could release the beta at the end of this month, but it would miss a several interesting features like:

• working vendor - the vendor code is still half-done, and even if the coder probably could finish it in 3 days, it would be greatly untested. Also I would need to define the vendors inventory, check what kind of items they might have available, and so on!
• side quests - I'm thinking what to have as side quests. In the game, there are already side-quests but they appear later in the game, in particular in the expansion when you can choose if to recruit Sauzer, Mesphit and Chambara. I want to add a few more, nothing complex since the game is already VERY long, but still...
• map system - it will be a simple map system like Planet Stronghold (nothing complex) but still I am missing the art and good part of implementation (like random encounters, and so on)
• battle effects - there are SOME battle effects done (nothing fancy!) but when you have 80+ skills to do, it starts to be a LOONG task. I don't want to spend much time on this, because it doesn't make sense to make lots of efforts for a 1-2 second animation, but still I don't want it to look like a total crap :D

So as you can see, nothing really ESSENTIAL to the game, but I don't want to rush out the beta, and have people test an already outdated version, since I will add most of the things above.

What about the grinding?

The term grinding, as defined by Wikipedia:

"Grinding is a term used in video gaming to describe the process of engaging in repetitive and/or boring tasks not pertaining to the story line of the game. The most common usage is in the context of MMORPGs in which it is often necessary for a character to repeatedly kill AI-controlled monsters, using basically the same strategy over again to advance their character level to be able to access newer content."

As you might know, I make heavy story-based games. However, Loren is the first game that has a very solid RPG gameplay. It's much deeper, detailed and also complex than Planet Stronghold. And you can reach up to level 30 (I decided to lower the level cap from level 60 !).

I know that some people hate grinding, while other consider it an essential part of RPGs. Of course, not an excessive grinding, but if the battle is well done, it's cool to kill monsters to gain more experience and unlock new skills.

In my case though, it also helps the game. As much as I can test it, and even if I offer different difficulty levels, I cannot know every single player skills. So even if I give out more experience points at Easy difficulty level, I cannot know if it will be enough for everyone to win the battle with Jul in chapter 4 of the game (it will be a hard battle!).

A solution is to leave some zones of the map with "wandering monsters", so that if the player is stuck in a battle and cannot seem to win it, he can visit those places and fight some grinding battles to gain more experience and level up. As consequence, he can retry the previous battle but with a strongest party, increasing the chances of winning.

I think done this way, grinding is not a bad thing anymore, but is a sort of "approved cheat mode". You can win most battles at your selected difficulty level? Good. You can't? Try playing in a easier mode. You still cannot win that specific battle? Try grinding a bit, and then come back with a strongest party and kick the enemy's ass!

The other games

I know recently I'm completely absorbed into Loren and haven't updated much the other games progresses. This is because Loren is a very long and complex game to make, and I want to finish it soon. However don't worry, since after it's finished I'll release some new dating/life sim, including Heileen 3 (probably this summer).

Here's a picture of Marie with the "new look". I find her very cute:

And she is a romance option ;)

Old school vs modern RPGs

In the image above, my cat Orfeo (italian for Orpheus) on the bed.

Today I want to talk about some differences between "old school" and "modern" RPGs, since I'm working right now on Loren Amazon Princess that is what I would define a "old school" RPG for some aspect, while "modern" for others.

Below a gallery with some preview images, showing several aspects of the game:

See the full gallery on Posterous

One of the main differences between oldschool and modern RPGs is the turn-based / real-time mechanics. Most modern RPG use real-time. Unfortunately, I was kind of forced to use turn-based because making a real-time game needs lots more animation/art, and in general is harder to make.

I still have a battle movement order though, which is dynamic. If you see the column on the right, shows the movement order, and as you hover the mouse on the possible actions, it gives you a "preview" of how your decision will change the order. So beside the power/effects of a skill, you'll also have to ponder the delay that the same skill gives. Sometimes for example, is better to use a skill that does less damage but lets you kill two goblin thieves already injured, than "waste" a skill that does more damage but pushes you back on the movement order list.

Another difference is auto-mapping. In my game I don't have dungeons with map, so there will be just a main map of the world, with easily accessible places. But I remember some oldschool RPGs that didn't have an automap, and you had to write down on paper the map of the dungeon. Seems crazy thinking about this now !

The user interface is also something that was greatly improved over old RPGs. Last year I bought Temple Of Elemental Evil, and was shocked by the clumsy interface: no mouse over, so simple button to change view/move object between players, and so on. Most modern RPGs use a "shared inventory", that means all player have immediate access to all item owned by the party. If someone has an item equipped you usually need to unequip it to put in the pool, but before every item (even unequipped ones) was carried by a specific player, so the user had to do a much bigger amount of clicking.

The vendor / items comparison wasn't automatic like now. In most new games, you have a way to immediately see if an item you just looted is more or less powerful than the one you're carrying. Before instead you had to look at all the statistics and decide for yourself! It was crazy, right? :)

Also, with a RPG featuring only one character is quite easy, but if you have a party things starts to get complex: what if there are two warriors in the party? you need to tell the player if the new longsword you just found is better or worse than the weapons equipped by both warriors. This is the problem we're facing right now with the loot and the vendor in Loren Amazon Princess game!

The difficulty level is also something that changed radically over time. Most old RPGs were very hard, while modern ones offers at least several different difficulty levels, so people that just want to have easy combat and progress in the story, will be able too. In Loren there are three different difficulty levels, and they have a big impact on gameplay rules. At easy level, enemies are easy and the elemental resistances have a marginal impact on battle. At hard level, enemies are tougher and the elemental resistances have a key role: hitting an enemy vulnerable to fire with a fire-based skill will have a much bigger impact.

Lastly, the level progression was completely different. Even if I have to say that JRPG were always different from western RPGs, but in general leveling up after the first early levels was a big achievement. In AD&D games, already getting from level 5 to level 6 could take a LOONG time! Recently, beside the already mentioned JRPG, even in modern MMORPG like Everquest or WoW, you're going to see the levelup screen much more often.

In Loren, I have decided to use this system: each character has a main class (Warrior, Thief or Mage) and a specialization (unique) class. Each class has 5 different skills, and each one has 3 levels of power. So as you see, each character has 30 different skills that can learn. So I have decided (though this might change during testing of course!) to have a level cap of 60, and give a skill point every 2 levels. This way, at level 20 you could have learned all the skills for every character, but at the basic level of power: so will add some more strategy since the player will need to think which skill to raise up to the maximum power level?

Every level up instead you get 3 attribute points, to spend on Strength, Skill or Will attributes. Will write about those three attributes next friday since the explanation is long and beside... by that time I might be about to announce the open beta preorders! (crossing fingers)

Numbers, numbers and formulas...

In the picture above, Batman looks broken. In reality, he was sleeping since hours...

What's about the numbers? Well, not many people know what's behind a game. It's much more complex than what you think. That is, if you do the things like a good game designer should! ;)

Numbers of a dating sim

What's behind a simple dating sim like Heileen 3 that I'm writing right now? nothing, you might say, it's just text and images, and a few choices. No, not really: the choices needs to be balanced, otherwise the gameplay would be a disaster! So, even for an apparently simple game like a dating sim, there's a lot of work behind the scenes. Check the image below:

this is the OpenOffice spreadsheet of the first 37 scenes of the game. In each row, I put a short description of the scene, and then I added a "1" when the choices possible involve one of the seven Sins or Virtues. Below, at the bottom (but is not visible in the screenshot), there's a formula called "Summatory" that sums all the values. Why? Because a well designed and balanced game should offer the player the same amount of choices for each of the seven Sins/Virtues!

So, while writing, I keep constantly open the spreadsheet, and I try to balance the game so that the player will always have the chance to  get one of the 14 possible job endings (tied to the Sins/Virtues).

I'm not going too much in the details since discovering the skill+sin/virtue combo will be part of the fun of the game, but for example, the "Nun" ending will involve having max Chastity and max Faith skill.

On the right part instead, there are the choices that will affect the 6 possible romances of the game. The labels means: Morgan, John, Jonathan, Sebastian (the 4 male characters, Sebastian is a new one) and Marie, Lora (the 2 female characters).

Numbers of a RPG!

If a dating sim is so "complex", imagine a RPG! Making a RPG without spending at least one month first designing the rules, is a suicide. Don't do that. I can guarantee that you'll be unsatisfied by the result.

Now check the OpenOffice screenshots below:

See the full gallery on Posterous

one is the condition/skill relationship for Loren the Amazon Princess RPG. How you read that? is a bit complex, but in practice:

• the first table is the warrior skills. the cells with orange background require the target to be "Staggered". Once it is, you can use for example the Gladiator "Battle Cry" (which has chances to Scare enemies), or the Blademaster "No Mercy" (which has chance to Weaken the enemies).
• the second table is the thief skills. Thieves have weak attacks, but if the target is in the right condition, they can deliver powerful critical attack using their skills. They can set a target in a specific condition themselves. For example, using the Flaming Torch on a Slowed target, they can set a target in the Burning condition too. Then, a Demonblood (Mesphit) can use the Immolation skill to deal an incredible amount of damage.
• the third table is the mages. Differently from Warrior and Thief class, a Mage doesn't need any condition pre-requisite. They can just attack using their spells, which will inflict specific conditions as you can guess (Blizzard will inflict Frozen condition, Plague inflict Poisoned condition, and so on).

The second image instead is a work-in-progress of the weapons dabatase. Some values might not yet bet final. But as you can see there's already a good variety of items! We've decided to use the following weapon division based on damage type: Edged (dagger, sword, axe), Impact (mace, club), Flail (Flail, Morning Star), Polearm (Staff, Halberd), Bow, Missile (Crossbow).

Explaining all the values will take too long, but if you're familiar with RPGs you might understand already what is their use.

This was just to show the tremendous amount of work behind a RPG, and just for the skills and weapons (there's more, balancing the classes, the enemy encounters, and so on). Now you understand why I've decided not to make more than 1 RPG a year? :D

Homosexual relationship in games

I want to spend a few words about the homosexual relationship that I plan to put in all my future games. First of all, I am honestly a bit shocked by how Spirited Heart Girl's Love announcement was mostly ignored by the press and reviewers. It's not something new for me (I'm used to that) but this time was even worse than usual.

I really hope that is NOT because of main theme (women homosexuality) of the game, and hope is due only to random circumstances (I know from past years that September is not really one of the best months to do a new game release).

In any case, everyone who played the game said that the romances are much better than the original game, and in general the players' feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and that's what matters to me. So I plan to keep adding homosexual romance in all my future games, alongside the straight options, since all I care about is what my customers think!