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[tompliss]

(possible) Bell curve for the arrows' trajectory ?

It may be an advantage, to be able to fire at someone without being seem, or without being fired at.

By the way, from the first post, the game would really feel arcade-y. Would the bow bring a little stealth potential to that (being mostly silent) ?

[Mesa]

(possible) Bell curve for the arrows' trajectory ?

It may be an advantage, to be able to fire at someone without being seem, or without being fired at.

By the way, from the first post, the game would really feel arcade-y. Would the bow bring a little stealth potential to that (being mostly silent) ?

It's a pretty cool idea that could add some extra depth to the bow.

As for the stealth, I have some plans for supporting a stealthy playstyle (I may have mentioned a stealth-centric mutation earlier on) and bow, as well as the mines are both good for players that prefer a bit slower-paced playstyle (while still being relatively quick and action-oriented).


Another thing that has been on my head for a fair while now was the subject of music - having music that goes well with the pace and atmosphere of the game is crucial to making it a complete experience, I feel.
In a fairly wacky post-apocalypse settnig, you can't really expect a full-on, slow-paced orchestral score like in, say, Skyrim (not that Skyrim is entirely slow-paced), after all. I know I want a guitar, either acoustic or electric, to be centric to most of the tracks, if I even make that an actual game, but I can't really decide on the exact style, but I have narrowed down a few directions.

#1 - being one of the games that drove me to making GF in the first place (if only on paper), I can't not mention Nuclear Throne here. However, I prefer the more edgy style of the original game, Wasteland Kings, rather than the current style of NT (I'm by no means trying to say that NT OST is bad, hell no, it's one of my favorite recent soundtracks, but it doesn't really go well with what I want to present with Gun Fran.).
Wasteland Kings main theme

#2 - for some reason the blues (and R&B, for that matter) of Blues Brothers seems to go along really nicely with my head visualizations. I know this sounds like a really lame reasoning, but I'm rather poor with words at times, and this is one of those timess.
Blues Brothers - Ghost Riders in the Sky
(also Ghost Riders totally isn't gonna be a group of birds or anything...)
Blues Brothers - Peter Gunn Theme
(neither is Peter Gunn going to be a side character, I swear...)

(all those potential references, man)

#3 - 1960s music, rock in particular, as well as Morricone's spaghetti western songs. I'm not sure if it's just because I was listening a lot to that one 1-hour-long western music (is there even a term for that) mix recently, but either way...
The Shadows - Apache
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly theme song
Heck, "A Fistful of Shells" sounds fitting, doesn't it?)

#4 - something a bit more heavy, like power-metal kind of heavy. Being a rather avid DragonForce fan, Scars of Yesterday, and the rest of the Ultra Beatdown album seems to be getting it right.
DragonForce - Scars of Yesterday



I could be going on forever with these, because I have many ideas for the music here, but what do you think? What kind of music would fit well with frogs, birds and humans shooting at each other while running on top of destroyed skyscrapers in a ruined city in a nuclear desert?

[Fniff]

I'll see if I can make a track. Very interested in this project by the way.

[Parsely]

Secondly, recently I've been sketching the vehicles of the mutants a fair lot more. If you remember what I mentioned in the original post, the birds live on skyships high in the sky. Well, here is one such airship.

If the import works, I want to try messing with this one and making it huger. Ships are just plain cool, and they get better the bigger they are.

[Mesa]

Secondly, recently I've been sketching the vehicles of the mutants a fair lot more. If you remember what I mentioned in the original post, the birds live on skyships high in the sky. Well, here is one such airship.

If the import works, I want to try messing with this one and making it huger. Ships are just plain cool, and they get better the bigger they are.

Go ahead!
(Also I've changed the ship design slightly and they now have 2 sets of engines in the front as well so they can actually stay balanced in the air. Scans later, probably.)

[Mesa]

Well, it took me a while, but Gun Francisco forum game #2, Guntarctica, is a go!

It's full of bad images, lame puns and personal injokes - in other words, everything that makes Gun Francisco Gun Francisco!

[Mesa]

Hi, it's me again with a major update!

Once again sorry for pre-maturely letting another game die, but I bumped into a writer's block combined with procrastination + some lore-related stuff which has driven me away from the forum game, but I promise I will go back to it later this week.

Now, as to why I was silent in the past days...
I felt like there was something missing in relation to the general plot of the game.

I mean, I couldn't endlessly justify everything being a result of either technology or mutations, even if the lore is rather casual as-is.
So...

Meet the third major element of the Gun Francisco universe. Here be magic!

Spoiler: A backstory of magic in the GF world (click to show/hide)

Thousands of years ago when human civilizations were beginning to emerge, magic was abundant and omnipresent - mana was extremely common, and with it, a plethora of magical creatures were wandering around the globe - some closer, some further away from the civilization.
For a long while, humans did not know how to use magic - it was not unitl the ancient Greeks discovered the mystical crystals filled with mana in their quarries in the 5th century BC, and called it the Shaping Stones. They quickly harnessed their power and wanted to learn more about them - by the 1st century AD, they knew that not all Shaping Stones behave the same, that the sphere of magic they control depend on the Stone's color and their power - on their size. Shaping Stones were a rare commodity and only the most rich people could afford one, and learning how to use it was even harder than that.

Throughout the centuries, the wielders of the Shaping Stones were known under different names - mages, wizards, druids, sorcerers, witches - however, they were all able to speak one, unified language, regardless of where they came from - the Spelltongue.
In the early medieval times, the mages started to realize that magic is not infinite - the overuse of Shaping Stones slowly, but steadily started to drain mana away from their surroundings - magical spells became less and less powerful, mystical creatures such as dragons and elves were going extinct and so they had to find a way to preserve its existence.

Thus, with the help of alchemy, the European mages turned mana, an otherwise unharnessable energy in the air, into a form of a condensed liquid, universally known as a potion. With the addition of grounded Shaping Stones, the potions could acquire new properties, ranging from healing wounds to acting as a repel against magical monsters, to enchanting whatever it's poured on.
However, while magic was more or less kept a secret up until this point, common people have become more aware of it, and that was worrying to the mages of the world.
This lead combined with the recession of magic lead to a crisis and multiple wars between the groups of mages, but after a while they realized that there is only one solution - to wipe the magic once and for all.

Around the end of the medieval era, in 1493, seven most powerful mages from around the globe gathered in Stonehenge to perform a ritual that would annihilate all mana from the world, and with it, the magic. Before that happened however, a few magical relicts such as books about magic and a few potions and Shaping

Stones were stored and sealed in the so-called Vault of Magic, meant to be impenetrable by the final spell.
The ritual took place on 6th of December, 1493 and became then known as the Magicide, putting an end to mana, magical creatures and mages. Shaping Stones became ordinary crystals, legendary beasts went extinct and so magic was no more, and the world has entered the "Second Era" - the era without magic.

Fast forward 6 centuries later, to the Nuclear War of 2033 - bombs are falling from the sky and battles erupt all over the globe. The Vault of Magic was meant to withstand the power of the Magicide, but not the power of the nukes and as such it was broken open by the blasts, and revealing its contents.
The mages did not however predict how much magical force they actually sealed within the Vault, and so when it was opened, it rapidly spread itself around the globe in a giant burst, bringing powerful ancient creatures back to life and turning regular humans into humanoid animals. With the modern peoples being unaware of magic's existence and the widespread radiation, everyone believed that all of this was caused the aftermath of the Nuclear War, and thus putting an end to it.
Now however, magic roams the fallen world once again, and with it, powerful mages and mighty creatures thought to be long ago dead...

As with all things, it's only the first draft and may not even end up being canon, and I'm willing to hear your feedback on the subject.

I'll leave you with an album of pictures from my backlog, some of which I've posted around in the Random Things thread or Guntarctica. Not all of them make sense and were mostly just done to kill the time when the Internet connection was down, but I don't care.

Also a surprisingly fitting Imagine Dragons song.

[My Name is Immaterial]

To be honest, I dislike the idea. Before, with the focus on mutations and radiation, it gave a 70s(?) B-movie feel. A bit silly/cheesy, but fun. Magic totally changes the tone, at least in the way you describe. Your version of magic says that magic is the dominate force, and everything that happened mostly happened because of magic. At least, that's the way I see it.

If you're looking for excuses about the animal people, use genetic hybridization.

However, if you have to have magic, you could take the Shadowrun route, where magic is part of the world, not the cause of the world. I feel that a setting like that would have to be more gritty, though. It would be kinda awesome to run around with an rocket in one hand, and a fireball in the other.

[flame99]

Yeah, I have to agree with MNiI. I think that introducing some magic into the world is a good idea, but in it's current state, it feels a bit overpowering compared to the rest of it. Maybe tone down the importance of it a touch?

[Mesa]

Well, as I said, this was the first draft of the concept, and I may lessen magic's role in the world. Just because it had a major impact on it doesn't mean that technology and mutations are suddenly irrelevant. (plus people turning into animal people could be a result of both of magic and radiation, for example, even if I didn't quite make it sound like it in the story)

I'll look into some alternative concepts and ideas let you know if I think of something awesome(ish) later, but I'm not sure when that'll be.
Cheers.

[Mesa]

It's GUNDAY!
And it means there will be GUNS today!

Well, one of them at least.
The hybrid gun.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's an extreme rare weapon and was only prototyped during the Nuclear War, but it's also immensely powerful - it can fire either bullets (not unlike those from the SMG) or arcs of electricity from its side electricity compartment, which don't pack as much of a punch but can be recharged almost anywhere.
Alternatively one could try to enable both modes for overcharged bullets but this mode was never fully finished and is not entirely stable...


Anyway, guns aside, I want to talk about something else here.
See, right now gun-wielding peoples have been the main focus, with some minor mention of more unique mutations and the recent introduction of magic (I'm still reworking that story).

Now however, I want to make those 3 paths equal and distinct from each other.
They're not factions per se, but more like classes.

Therefore, the world of Gun Francisco is now split between:

The gunners compose the major part of the sentient mutants, and are pretty much your "warriors" if this was a more medieval setting. They rely on the pre-war and post-war technology, which includes guns, vehicles and gadgets to survive in this new, harsh world.

Supermutants are composed of various animals, plants and humanoids that have, through either radiation, mutagens or other means become biological killing machines. The supermutants are extremely numerous but only few can keep their sentience after mutating, and as such it's rare to meet a mutant that isn't outright willing to murder whoever stands in their way. Supermutant features include, but are not limited to - claws, shells, toxic spit, wings, tails and tentacles.
(comparable to any thief/agility-based class out there)

A mag is a person who possesses the power to utilize ancient magical stones, runes and artifacts. The magic only came to the world during the Nuclear War but was largely unnoticed by the masses, even though in combination with the critical radiation levels it turned people around the world into sentient mutants, and brought ancient magical creatures back to life. There are few mags left in the world and learning their secrets is no easy task, but the powers they know can possibly change the future of the world alone.
(Pretty much your wizards.)

On top of that, there'll be one other big change happening to the world - it is no longer just about scorching deserts or freezing wastelands (or oceans) - now there are also massive toxic jungles, sprawling with mutant flora and fauna, and are usually home to the otherwise-excluded supermutants, as well as desperate gunners and mags.

The person from my avatar is one such mag.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Because wizard hats are not fashionable at all nowadays, therefore you need a fedora instead.


Now, this may mean that what I've talked about and showed you is effectively just a fraction of the full combat picture (well, all this means is that the mutation system will be getting a rework and I have yet to talk about magic), but for now I think that's good enough.

I'll leave you with another picture featuring the hybrid gun. I should probably slow down on the human gunners, but oh well, next time I'll try to get some more actual mutant and mag images.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Have a nice Gunday and until next time.

[Mesa]

Welp, no response?
Okay...

I haven't got to do much in terms of direct worldbuilding, but I've been crazy last week with the images. Plus I've slightly improved the quality of shading (HOPEFULLY!), so yeah.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This was meant to be a sort of city made of ice built by the mags, called Cryopolis (see that giant hexagonal shield? I guess it looks more technology than magic tho, but it was kinda half-assed tbh) guess that will do.






I guess you could classify those three fellows as a party... At least I would. (you've got your sneaky bastard chicken, reasonable mag and slightly dim-witted supermutant... I guess I could expand on that a little more in the future.)



I haven't drawn many frogs lately. I still have problems with them. So here, have a black-and-white silhouette.

I should probably write up something else here but seeing as I'm low on ideas lately I don't have much other than those (still terrible) drawings.
So yeah... I can't end posts properly. :/

[Mesa]

Alright, it's 2AM and I don't quite have the energy to make an elaborate post so I'll make this quick:

Gun Francisco (both the whole setting and the location) is now called El Fierro. I figured it's a somewhat more fitting, if a bit less cheesy, name.

I'll be now actively posting about EF on the worldbuilding subreddit and I'll probably occasionally relay my posts here. In fact, here are two. (alright, I'm currently doing the third one, it's about vehicles)

I've also re-designed the frogs again slightly. I'm always shooting for simplicity in the design (so I don't have to spend hours trying to make a simple sketch, because I like my art to be simple and easy to reiterate).

I'll leave you with a bunch of art (some of which might have come in the previous update). I have some more in my art folder but I don't really feel like sharing that, or at least not yet.

I've renamed the mags to be simply mages and the mutants are now beasts to make it easier to distinguish them from the frogs and birds who are also technically mutants.

[My Name is Immaterial]

What does El Fierro mean, in context?

[Mesa]

In context, it's essentially what Gun Francisco used to be - a great ancient(ish) city full of long-lost technology that everyone wants to claim for themselves. Except that it's no longer San Francisco but rather it's somewhere in South America filled with beasts who care not for its strange artifacts.

Also it means "of iron" in Spanish, kind of like El Dorado means "of gold".