Hi, everyone. I've decided to start a development blog following the progress of ExploRPG. I suspect updates will be slow at first, but they will start to come more regularly later. Currently, I'm early in the development of the engine and the game, and as such there's not much to show or talk about that most people will be interested in (although I'm sure other game developers or aspiring game developers may be interested in the technical side of things, I'd personally rather be working than documenting every single line of code I hack out day by day). I'll try to at least post weekly for the time being and generally talk about what I've been doing and working over the course of the week.
As the game starts to come together more, I would like to post more regularly. The game is currently early enough in development that I'm using either quickly made, ugly, temporary resources, or resources from free sources, to develop the game, so early screenshots will not be pretty, to say the least. The earliest development blogs with screenshots, as they come, will be more about showing off features as their being implemented than showing the entirety of the game, and they do not represent the polish, stability, or graphical fidelity of the final product - after all, it's still in development, and no game plays gracefully and looks beautiful until it's done.
As the game starts to come together more, I would like to post more regularly. The game is currently early enough in development that I'm using either quickly made, ugly, temporary resources, or resources from free sources, to develop the game, so early screenshots will not be pretty, to say the least. The earliest development blogs with screenshots, as they come, will be more about showing off features as their being implemented than showing the entirety of the game, and they do not represent the polish, stability, or graphical fidelity of the final product - after all, it's still in development, and no game plays gracefully and looks beautiful until it's done.
I suppose I should talk a little about some planned features for the game, in no particular order. Please note that any features listed here may not make it to release - they're only the planned features.
This post has gotten long, and I haven't even talked about what I've done so far. Therefore, I think I'll save that as a topic for next time. See you in a week or two!
- Fully explorable 3D world with no limitations on movement - if you see it, you can get there somehow. The size of the world is not currently planned exactly, but I hope to be able to create a reasonably large environment for player's to explore. However, as an independent developer, there's only so much I can do by myself, so I'm not trying to push boundaries with the size of the environment. Related goals include: Cities, towns, and other locations that should be outdoors will be on the same map as the rest of the explorable world. Building interiors is currently undecided - it will push the engine more, requiring players to have better hardware, but it makes the world come alive more... so time will tell for this. Dungeon interiors are on a separate map for gameplay reasons.
- Interesting lore and setting. I'm not ready to give away too much yet, but the goal is to create a unique fantasy world that still feels believable. The world is permeated with magic, so twisted and strange geometries, fauna, creatures, architecture, and so forth are to be expected.
- One major feature - the feature that sparked the original idea for the game and is therefore, debatably, the most important feature - is the ability to purchase property, gather resources, and build on that property. The goal is more "The Sims" style building and construction than "Minecraft" style, with the addition of constructing objects for placement on your property. However, building things on your property shouldn't just be for the sake of building them, which is a personal pet peeve of mine with the two aforementioned games. The player should be able to DO things with what they construct on their property - start a farm, a school, a business, build a hidden wizard tower and actually do hidden wizard tower things like research and making spells, and so forth.
- Complex RPG system that feels rewarding to hardcore RPG and CRPG fans, while hopefully being able to also ease-in newcomers. It is a more "true" RPG in that the purpose is to role play a character, with their stats, skills, abilities, and weaknesses, instead of simply playing as yourself. The player is unable to "max" their character, and therefore have to make important decisions about who their character is and how they grow - how to be strong, and how to cover their weaknesses.
- Construction that ties in not only to the player's property, but other abilities they can perform as well, such as creating weapons, armor, clothes, magic spells, magic scrolls, and so forth.
- A large variety in resources that can be collected - the goal is that almost every physical object in the game world should be collectable, and everything in the wilderness such as trees, rocks, creatures, etc. should provide a unique resource and/or be useful in some way. For example, even collecting silverware, useless besides perhaps decorating the player's property, can be melted down to baser elements more useful to the player.
- Combat that is deep and enjoyable, balancing skill input of the player with the abilities and skills of the character. Unique (or near unique - it's hard to be literally unique when everything has been done before!) combat systems. I suspect combat posts will start showing up early in these devblogs, so I'll talk more about this aspect later.
- A "living" world - NPCs who do more than stand around waiting for the player. NPCs who have jobs, families, lives, histories, strengths and weaknesses, goals and things they do, and even personalities. "Living" is in quotes because I'm not quite delusional enough to believe I can singlehandedly create a perfectly simulated world - especially along with all the other wanted features. Of course, the AI will take shortcuts, keen players will find flaws in their decision making, and occasionally NPCs will likely do things that don't seem "realistic." The goal isn't to be perfect, but to be good enough that a player willing to suspend their disbelief can, for a short time, believe the world is real.
- Personality system wherein every NPC has a personality, as well as the player, which affects a complex dialogue web that the player can navigate to have conversations with NPCs.
- Graphically, the goal in the end is to pull off PS2-level graphics. I don't know how well I can do this. I've never done a KickStarter or anything similar, but I'm debating attempting so after the game comes along enough that I'm proud enough to show what I've made so far to the world and see what happens... maybe I can hire a graphics guy? Time will tell. This is probably the wish-washiest goal on the list, to be honest - I'm a programmer, not a graphics guy.
- And more! Maybe.
This post has gotten long, and I haven't even talked about what I've done so far. Therefore, I think I'll save that as a topic for next time. See you in a week or two!