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[Neonivek]

Original Post (Spoilered for space AND for Cado's adventure spoilers)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hello I am Neonivek and some of you have seen me around the forum, hopefully with 50% less scorn then my scientists have current estimated existing, and when I am going on inane tirades I think of the next project to start and hopefully never finish! Whippie!

Introductions aside one of my favourite genres have always been the point and click adventure genre. Often belittles for its nonsensical puzzles the Point and Click genre has always been a staple of interesting character driven story lines and living storytelling worlds even going as far back as its text game grandfather many of whom were around decades after their creation (such as Zork).

The Three pillars of point and clicks are Character, Plot, and Setting where the puzzles interact with those three in order to enhance the overall experience. That is the philosophy I want to use while designing the game. The main character should seem witty and intelligent for diffusing dangerous situations with nothing but what he/she finds lying around in a world dead set on his demise. It is when puzzles don't work towards any of the three pillars, or that are truly horrible as puzzles, that the game is hurt.

Now instead of my original idea of a detective series involving two characters that use empathic knowledge and hard focused dicipline in order to solve a combination of supernatural and natural threats, often at the same time, I thought my first project should be something that the community should find easier to critique and possible aid along.

As such my first project is going to be based around Dwarf Fortress and after asking the forum their opinions I have brought my list down to three. One of which is only my preference that I am including anyhow.

These ideas are as follows:

-Wacky Dwarf adventures in Fortress Life: You play a Dwarf, name pending, who must fulfil his insanely inane goal of finding an ancient worn out sock that will somehow save the entire kingdom. The focus of this game will mostly be to highlight the more lighthearted aspects of Dwarf Fortress as well a exploiting as many possible in jokes as possible. The largest issue with this kind of game is that comedy is a weakness of mine and with comedy games there comes the risk of being lazy. If I had to describe the type of comedy the game would employ I would say it would feel a lot like Discworld where things are crazy and mostly shrugged off as ordinary.

-A Serious Game about a Human Diplomat stuck inside a Fortress: Lets face it, in real life dwarf society would seem almost alien to us. The idea here is that an ordinary human is stuck in a fortress that has just fell under a tantrum cycle and must try to find his escape while the corrupt aspects of dwarven society and the true dangers of even being inside a fort attempt to stop him. I want to also focus hard on developing the main character's personality as somewhat fatalist but allow him to change and essentuate his other traits.
--Note: This is the idea I personally liked but think is against the "image of what DF is"

-Cado's Adventures: This is somewhat of two ideas. The first is a retelling of Threetoe's story, no I don't have permission I didn't think I'd get this far, where you play Cado. The other is a game set right after the events of the first story. The largest issue here is that I interpret the story as “less” epic and more whimsy. After all it is a story about what amounts to a child fighting the highest ranked mages and magical entities and winning usually when he remembers he has magic (I like to think every mage in Cado's story is ranked either by mutual acceptance or by some cosmic ranking deity). The second idea is focused on perverting that idea, taking Cado's “Magic beats all” ability and reversing it.

Anyhow that is all about my ideas. The only universal idea for all of these is that I want "death" to be somewhat common given that Dwarf Fortress is a game where you can die simply because a peasant happened to get lucky with a punch through several layers of armor and manages to crash your skull into your brain. Cado's though may not feature death at all (given the main character and tone of Threetoe's story).

Mostly my action plan is once I chose which game to make I'll create a script then start working on the game. I have no experience making videogames beyond being handheld by RPGmakers. Though things should turn out better then usual anyhow.

Feel free to post. What do you think? Also feel free to ask questions I'd love answering them.

Thank you all for your input so far. I am going to go with the more serious Dwarf Fortress Point and Click adventure game.

I am keeping this space clean for future updates.

Ideas, Aid, and Comments are greatly appreciated. I will answer your questions.

[Enzo]

Oh, cool. I had a very similar idea sometime back but it never got off the ground.

I think the Human Diplomat angle sounds more interesting that Lolrandom McDorfs Pigtail Sock Adventure, and could easily contain quite a bit of humour as well (albeit, I guess, slightly darker humour). Are you going to make it totally DF-centric at the risk of alienating players unfamiliar with DF, or play it slightly broader? Are you going to use AGS or something similar to make it? Are you going to try very very hard to avoid nonsensical, obtuse inventory puzzles*?

*SAY YES.

[Neonivek]

Well let me go through this in order. Also I am glad someone likes my more serious suggestion.

For the first it really depends on the story I wish to go into. The Comedy Dwarf Fortress for example has no choice but to be totally DF-centric as there really is nowhere to go, however my idea was to somehow use the fact that the person playing it may not know about Dwarf Fortress as a way to enhance the experience. In a similar way that the Discwork games, in their humorous "The more you know" segments, was still hillarious even without ANY knowledge of the books in question (Which I didn't at the time). My idea even was to stick the "record keeper" in your pocket and using him would force him to define and analyse any aspect of dwarven life.

The others however are meant to be more logical and the parts that don't make sense are supposed to be significant. For example if you saw a Dwarf in a special mood a person who played the game would immediately know all there was to know. Someone who didn't would be able to simply ask the dwarf and gleam precious information about the world. Since "Setting" is one of the pillars of point and clicks it is always important that no matter how odd the world is, you should always have your feet on the ground.

As for AGS I may have to. I have no programming experience and anything that helps me surpass the huge hurdles the game throws at me is helpful. I have some issues with it just at a glance and one of the largest reasons I am writing everything down first is so I won't force myself to make consessions, be lazy, with any difficulty I might have.

As for nonsensicle, obtuse inventory puzzles. Anything that takes the experience away from the story should be cast from the game. A puzzle that makes no sense and is so insane and off the wall that there is no way anyone could have known about it breaks the immersion of the game as the player is usually forced to simply ignore the puzzle altogether. So Yeah I will attempt to avoid it like the plague. Mind you I am not saying I am going to avoid some mindbenders, getting stuck in an adventure game is often part of the experience but it should always end with "Ohh I should have seen that".

So yeah no combining Rocks with water to make sand so you can use it on someone's shorts so they have to go change so you can take their pail.

[Enzo]

AGS actually seems pretty great, I've never used it in depth though. Regarding puzzles...

In The Longest Journey, I shit you not, in order to retrieve a key from an electrified subway track, you have to combine

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

a clothesline, a clamp, an inflatable duck and a band-aid.

That puzzle just about perfectly sums up everything I despise about the genre.

[Neonivek]

Honestly the second you have to combine more then three objects (and two of those objects have to be obvious that they need another insert) you should just stop making Adventure games altogether.

Objects that combine should always be a special case anyhow... and when presented with a puzzle that requires them it should be a bit obvious that you need to do so.

In otherwords it is a gimic that is abused so much that it really has become uttarly nonsense since most point and clicks try REALLY hard to shoehorn every point and click gimic as possible irregardless of what it does to the story or player (or they have a competition on who can make the most insane puzzle). My general oppinion on Point and Clicks is once you step outside the greats and the "gems"... You start to get into the really poor games.

It is a genre that is difficult to pull off well.

Though having this public does help. As any puzzle that is purely insane that I come up with, I will know is insane.

Let me think of the worst puzzle I ever had to solve... hmmm.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

How about the end of The Beast Within where you suddenly are in a first person maze and you have to trick the villain into a specific room... but you can't let it escape, you can't corner it, and you can confront it. As well it moves in counter to your movements.

Honestly this wouldn't be terrible in lets say... 7th guest where difficult "how the heck do I even begin to solve this?" puzzles are part of the game... but this is the Beast Within where the most insanely stupid "how the heck was I supposed to do that?" involved a coocoo clock that you could EASILY miss (since it is a store that looks like all the other stores that is closed in an area you could, and often did, skip through) and use it to create a false knock on the wall that someone would confuse for the door.
-Oddly enough the first Gabriel Knight game was a LOT harder. It is possibly the most difficult, without being unfair, point and click I ever played and with a lot of interesting information.

I didn't solve it. I used a FAQ and frankly I never felt guilty for doing so.

[Darvi]

A puzzle that makes no sense and is so insane and off the wall that there is no way anyone could have known about it breaks the immersion of the game as the player is usually forced to simply ignore the puzzle altogether. So Yeah I will attempt to avoid it like the plague.

Aren't adventure game creators legally required to insert at least one of those in their games or something?

Also, morbidly humorous game with the human diplomat seems fine to me.

Bluh bluh lack of sleep makes my writing incoherent.

[Kogut]

Human diplomat is interesting and may be potentially interesting for outsider.

[Neonivek]

A puzzle that makes no sense and is so insane and off the wall that there is no way anyone could have known about it breaks the immersion of the game as the player is usually forced to simply ignore the puzzle altogether. So Yeah I will attempt to avoid it like the plague.

Aren't adventure game creators legally required to insert at least one of those in their games or something?

Also, morbidly humorous game with the human diplomat seems fine to me.

Sometimes it is because of the difficulty in creating really great puzzles that arn't just outright insane. Other times it is because the person playing it isn't in the "Adventure game mindset".

The puzzles I dislike the most are what I call "Character placement puzzles" where you have to make sure your character is behind, usually, a unreferenced object. I always fail those.

I guess I COULD try my hand at a insane loopy puzzle.

Anyhow since people seem to like the more serious game. I'll come up with something on it. Highlighting characters and hopefully what a layout of such a game would be.

[Neonivek]

Minor Update

The Name

The name of a game can make or break it. If there is one thing I am weak at it is coming up with snappy attractive names. Though it doesn’t mean I can’t try. This is what the game will be identified as essentially making it its soul. It needs to be short yet somehow important to the theme or concept of the game.

Until a better name comes by the official name shall be: Hearth

While I thought of “The Fortress” I am reminded that if in the future if I wanted to make a sequel. It likely wouldn’t even take place in a fortress. As well as being overly cliché given its origins. As well I also came up with “Swords and Hearts”.

Hearth has the advantage of making the game about our main character having his home disturbed and taken away from a comfortable state of being.

Main Character

I am coming up with concept sketches and I shall post them as soon as they are done. I am not an artist but I should be able to convey what I am going with.

The name of the main character is something I am going to struggle with. Perhaps I should check the human name structures for Dwarf Fortress but they are often alien themselves and the point of the main character is to be the stone of which the player is to view the world. He needs to be balanced.

Main character name: Evander

The last name escapes me.

Personality concepts:

Evander is non-violent, and non-confrontational as well as a bit of a coward. He is pessimistic and fatalist. He is intelligent and inquisitive and can only seem to think his way out of situations lacking the physical prowess.

Mostly I think that Evander represents a intelligent and witty hero incapable of solving problems by brute strength. As well his speech pattern should reflect softer, diplomatic, tones.

This is because my original concept for Evander, as it stands right now, is that he is a Scholar who after a military coup, who eliminated all the prominent positions he could have had, is forced to work as a farmer. He is later made a diplomat to the Dwarves just to play lip service and not because of his abilities. There is more story but it isn’t fleshed out just yet.

I think this idea needs a major rewrite. The main character of a point and click may not need to be heroic but he must be boisterous so the player at least feels like they have more ability and not that they are limited by their character.

[freeformschooler]

Evander Justice? Either way, I really like the direction this is going.

[Darvi]

Mostly I think that Evander represents a intelligent and witty hero incapable of solving problems by brute strength. As well his speech pattern should reflect softer, diplomatic, tones.

I am imagining him as Pickle Inspector now.

[Neonivek]

Main Character Bad Concept Sketch!

Ok I got the horrificly badly drawn main character concept sketches done

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I want to use the Scholar concept though. Dressed in Grey as to essentiate how "faded" he is. I just like the idea of the Hero concept. (Maybe I should make a better version of the concept sketch. It will take a few hours of non-stop effort though... and I can NEVER draw skirts or dresses)

As for "Evander Justice" it is an interesting name and if he was a more bolsterous hero it would be perfect.

So I hope this gets across SOMEWHAT of what I want the hero to look like. Though I may have went overboard.

So until those get sorted out... I probably have to get to the script of the pregame. Then cry and sob. I'll eventually get to the parts that will give me great trouble. Such as pixil art, speach, and programming. No idea how I am going to go over those hurdles.

Comments, questions, and aid is greatly appreciated.

EARLY GAME BRAINSTORM

One of the issues I am having is I know what I need to have happen in the early game. However while I'd prefer to do it in sequence (Past to future) it may in fact be better if I reveal it throughout the game. I think I'll start the game at the fortress rather then in his hometown like I had planned.

[Enzo]

His hands are slices of bread D:

[Neonivek]

His hands are slices of bread D:

Those were supposed to be gloves...

Now he has too much fiber. I guess that means I have no choice but to do the hours long proper sketch as well as looking online for proper ways to draw robes. I guess there was just no shorter way to get through this part. I am just worried that if I don't go at a certain speed I won't finish.

[Darvi]

I want to use the Scholar concept though. Dressed in Grey as to essentiate how "faded" he is. I just like the idea of the Hero concept. (Maybe I should make a better version of the concept sketch. It will take a few hours of non-stop effort though... and I can NEVER draw skirts or dresses)nned.

Spoiler: Why not just take a third option (click to show/hide)

and combine the two?