Alien Planet

The idea has potential, but you havn't actually given much detail there. What sort of things will the player do? Will there be puzzles? Lots of combat?

It would seem that exploration is a pretty important part of the design, so you'll have to make sure you're generating interesting environments for the player to explore.

Will the other characters the player runs into be pre-created, randomly generated, or some of each? You can get better, more detailed characters with interesting personalities if they're pre-created, but on the other hand, if you need a lot of them that would mean a lot of work for whoever creates them. How many characters can the player have in thier team, and what happens to any characters they encounter that aren't added to the team? Will there be similar NPC controlled teams encountered?

Will the player ever find out why they were abducted by aliens? Will they get to learn about the aliens themselves? Will there be other alien species imprisoned on this world - perhaps also part of the 'experiment' if that's what it is?

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Original Post by Kingy Levels would be generated by a random level creator so the game could go on for a long time, perhaps maxing out at game level 255 and allowing the player to win the epic by finding a way off the planet and a route home.

How will you keep this interesting for the player? They can only do the same thing so many times, so you'll need to make sure the level generator is good enough to create some varied and interesting scenery for the player to explore. You'll need to put in different challenges for the player to keep them occupied. You'll need to have a good backstory so that the player wants to continue onwards and see what happens next.

Just a few of my immediate thought, hopefully they'll trigger some useful thought for you. [smile]

Kind of sounds like a Sanitarium style plot, mixed up with Final Fantasy style and C&C style play. Interesting.

> The idea has potential, but you havn't actually given much detail there. What sort of things will the player do? Will there be puzzles? Lots of combat?

I was thinking that the game would be primarily combat based. This is where the strategy side comes in, as you try to keep your team alive while progressing further into the alien planet. Hostile aliens and other humans would form the enemies that needed to be defeated. A puzzle element could be included by implementing locked doors that require certain keys (and variations on this theme, perhaps a chasm requires a rope, and so on). These puzzles would also be randomly generated, putting the puzzle somewhere on the level and the "key" item somewhere between the puzzle and the player start point. Perhaps even guarded by an enemy.

>It would seem that exploration is a pretty important part of the design, so you'll have to make sure you're generating interesting environments for the player to explore.

Thats an excellent point. Perhaps weird battlescapes and scenery would really help with this.

>Will the other characters the player runs into be pre-created, randomly generated, or some of each?

A mix of each. Almost all would be randomly generated, except for characters who move the story along. In fact it could just be some of the dialogs themselves which are precreated, allowing all characters to be randomly generated and it wouldnt matter if they are accidentally killed (i.e. no plot problems, the dialog just moves to another character for the player to trigger).

>How many characters can the player have in thier team, and what happens to any characters they encounter that aren't added to the team? Will there be similar NPC controlled teams encountered?

Im not sure about the answer to this. Perhaps 12. Many more might prove unmanagable, unless any RPG elements are vastly simplified. If the team was at its limit the dialog options would change - perhaps the player team says good luck to the character but any more team mates would just slow them down. On entering a new level, if the team was at capacity, perhaps only one character is put on the level, otherwise maybe d4+1 (1-5) can be found.

Similar NPC teams could be found but would be hostile. In fact this could prove an interesting challenge on mid-levels, allowing the player team access to good equipment in one go if they can defeat the enemy. Depending on the level layout, this could be an entirely optional task. Normally, meagre equipment could be scavenged from enemies or found lying around, so it could be worthwhile to tackle the rival team. Later on in the game, no rival teams would be found - no other humans would have made it this deep into the alien planet.

>How will you keep this interesting for the player? They can only do the same thing so many times, so you'll need to make sure the level generator is good enough to create some varied and interesting scenery for the player to explore. You'll need to put in different challenges for the player to keep them occupied. You'll need to have a good backstory so that the player wants to continue onwards and see what happens next.

This is a very good point and definitely the biggest challenge of the game. Hopefully the variety in the levels, offering a different experience every time in terms of the layout, enemy placement, item placement, what is on the level, and so on, would keep people interested. Also the level advancement (rpg) part should help with this.

Im also hoping that this "different game every time" approach would keep people playing the game again and again.

I'm reminded of the story from the first Halo game a little bit. Stuck on an alien world, you fight your way through enemies, collecting clues as to the purpose and nature of the world on which you find yourself. It's a neat idea, and I think it could be a great deal of fun to play.

I suggest that you go a step beyond random levels, and make the game randomly select from a set of possible "mysteries".

In one play-through, the alien planet might be peopled with an ancient race of hyper-intelligent being who lack the military might to fend off invaders, so they select champion warriors from aroung the galaxy and teleport you all to the planet, where you meet one another, perceive the threat, and address it, unwittingly helping the natives. Through the game, you figure this out, and at the end the natives give you a medal and a free teleport home.

Next time, you might have been shanghai'd by space pirate slavers, and their ship crash-landed near their secret base on an uncharted planet. You and the other prisoners band together and fight your way through the pirates and other hostile creatures until you discover the pirate base, sabotage their anti-air weaponry, disable their sensor cloak, and contact the Intergalactic Police. Then you hijack a pirate ship and escape during the bombardment you summoned.

Both of these scenarios could feature the same races, technology, fighting styles, and general map tilesets, but you would't know what was going on at the beginning of the game. It would add to replay value immensely, and might not be too difficult to implement.

Those are fantastic ideas, I like them a lot. Youre right, why not randomise the plot too! Different mysteries is genius :)

The one thing Im not totally sure about, that might put people off, is making it a turn based game. Can people enjoy exploring a level in a turn based style, or really do games of this ilk have to be real time to be any fun?

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Original post by kingy The one thing Im not totally sure about, that might put people off, is making it a turn based game. Can people enjoy exploring a level in a turn based style, or really do games of this ilk have to be real time to be any fun?

You could always mix-and-match like Fallout series did -- hide the turns from the player while exploring in (relatively) safe environment, switch them on whenever trouble starts.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage ...random plot selection...

Spectacular! Fantastic! I love this idea! You could also think about including some random branching in each of the scenarios. The second time your player nears the end of the captured-by-space-pirates plot, he will remember from his previous experience that he had to find a ship to escape the assault on the pirate base by the Intergalactic Police. This time, however, the random generator spits out a completely different sub-scenario:

The Intergalactic Police arrive in orbit above the pirate base. Instead of immediately bombarding the base, the fleet Admiral offers a pardon to the pirates, on one condition: they must surrender the dastardly rebel Dash Armstar (you)! Suddenly, the amnesia (that you have had since before your capture by the pirates) clears up and you remember that the fascist Intergalactic Police are your sworn enemies!

Implementing multiple branches like this may or may not be a lot of extra work. But the benefit would be that the player would never know if he had exhausted all the plots AND their myriad branches, and might come back for another mission.

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Original post by kingy The one thing Im not totally sure about, that might put people off, is making it a turn based game.

You could go the route of Jagged Alliance 2 or the Fallout series. Exploration, object interactions, and dialogue are real-time, but the game switches to turn-based when one of the character's in the player's party encounters an enemy. When combat is finished, the game switches back to real-time mode.

- Mike

I'd like to cast another vote for the Fallout realtime/turn-based hybrid. It's unobtrusive for adventuring, and it allows for strategic use of cover and carefully aimed shots during combat. I can think of no more elegant solution.

Fallout 2 had an option to leave it in real-time for fights. It was generally used by players with heavily buffed characters who could win fights even when they lost time by keeping it in real-time mode. This made routine raider fights less tedious, since you could either wipe them out or escape without waiting for them to take their combat turns.

Something like this might be a good late-game cure for turn-based tedium.

Ive never really played Fallout, I was aware of the games too late in the day to fully appreciate them (too much XCom I think!).

How does this real time exploration and turn based combat system hybrid work? Is it on sighting an enemy? If an enemy can see you, but you cant see him, does it switch to the turn based system?

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Original post by kingy If an enemy can see you, but you cant see him, does it switch to the turn based system?

I can't seem to remember. One thing I didn't like about Fallout was the incredibly close-range combat. I don't recall ever encountering an enemy that I couldn't see right away, since they wouldn't start blasting me with their M-16 (or whatever) until I was about 10 feet away.

In Fallout Tactics, you could switch between turn-based and real-time at a whim. If you have killed most of the enemies and are just waiting for your units to mop up the last of the bad guys, you could switch to real-time and finish the battler quicker.

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Original post by kingy How does this real time exploration and turn based combat system hybrid work? Is it on sighting an enemy? If an enemy can see you, but you cant see him, does it switch to the turn based system?

IIRC (it's been a while since i played it) the turn system would activate whenever the enemy has spotted you and chose to attack. For yourself, as long as you weren't spotted/under attack you could switch the turns manually on and off at any moment... if you were spotted/under attack the game would run in turn mode and wouldn't let the player to turn it off as long as any enemy aware of the player remained within certain range of the player's character(s).

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage I suggest that you go a step beyond random levels, and make the game randomly select from a set of possible "mysteries".

Iron Chef, I'd been thinking the same thing, ie. if the levels are randomised but the plot is the same each time then the mystery evaporates.

There must be many different ways to give the player clues, ie. can they find the (faulty) black box recorder from the crashed ship? If so it will give them a small hint. Will they find a survivor from their ship who will give them a few hints before dying / joining their party. Can they interrogate alien computers / beings?

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Original post by kingy Ive never really played Fallout, I was aware of the games too late in the day to fully appreciate them (too much XCom I think!). How does this real time exploration and turn based combat system hybrid work? Is it on sighting an enemy? If an enemy can see you, but you cant see him, does it switch to the turn based system?

I haven't played Fallout either, but the way I'd do it would be to have the game switch to TB automatically on a perceptible threat - gunfire within auditory range of a character, or sighting of an enemy or weapon fire. Unless the player manually reverts to real time, the game stays TB until, say, 5 turns after the last threat perception. The player can choose to turn the smart switching on or off, can manually set various smart switch conditions and can temporarily set the game to RT or TB by hand.

Settable conditions would take the form of a trigger event (in a list) and a behaviour (switch to RT, switch to TB, pause RT, do nothing)

Yeah, Fallout switched to mandatory TB whenever a character performed an act of aggression.

You could use that cue, and use the turn-based system you are working on for Advance and Fire. When you perceive a threat, or when a bullet whizzes past your head, or when a jungle beast jumps down from a rocky outcropping, your character tenses, his ears perk up, and the action pauses for an "orders" phase. You issue commands to each character under your control, and then hit "done". They all leap into action simultaneously, and after a set amount of time or when one of them finishes an order or when you manually interrupt the action, time pauses again and you adjust your commands.

Thats not a bad idea at all, its kind of making a new game type one by combining the best of both real time, turn based and the lsn turn based system.

So, to summarise, exploration is real time but combat / events trigger "freeze time" where orders can be given, then the action plays out, then a few seconds later if the combat / event is not over a mandatory freeze occurs again, until it is over. I like this idea, I can see this working well :)

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Original post by kingy Thats not a bad idea at all, its kind of making a new game type one by combining the best of both real time, turn based and the lsn turn based system.

Well, it's not exactly 'new' ^^ e.g. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic use something similar -- exploration is real time, and combat is a series of auto-progressing turns (characters carry out sequences of orders entered in their order queue, all involved sides act at the same time) with the option given to player to hit the pause at any time, and also to set up custom triggers for the pause to automatically occur (enemy spotted, ally down, low hp, damage dealt, end of round, etc)

I think there's a few other RPGs which use some version of this system as well, but since it works out really nicely there's no reason to not use it.

(a possible variation of it i haven't seen yet would be perhaps give player limited amount of time to issue orders to characters when they enter the paused mode ... say, 20-30 seconds per character or something similar... long enough to allow some tactical thinking, but also short enough to ensure some kind of dynamic to the battle)

Interesting idea, make the freeze time itself finite....

I disagree with you on whether its new or not, if you cant queue or stack orders its definitely different to how other games work. E.g. you can tell your unit to move somewhere, or fire at something, or perhaps duck and fire. Short and sweet, then a few seconds later the next freeze is imposed. Another important difference, with what I have in mind, is that the freezes would be time based and not round based... e.g. your unit may not have completed his action yet if you told him to move a long distance.

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Original post by kingy the freezes would be time based and not round based... e.g. your unit may not have completed his action yet if you told him to move a long distance.

Precisely. You could have "turns" only really involve one or two characters. Time pauses, the character without orders (say a medic who just finished taping up his own sprained ankle) is highlighted, and you give him a new order (march back to the bunker and begin passive triage mode). Meanwhile, you check the rest of your team:

The scout is climbing the cliff face toward the high ground where you told him to set up a communications relay tower. Good. Leave him alone.

The sniper is still covering the natural choke point at the canyonhead. He's doing okay, but he's been there a while, and it's beginning to make you nervous. You cancel his orders and tell him to move to a different vantage point.

Your helicopter is almost back to base with the wounded, so you pull three guys off of the stationary guns and tell them to suit up for deployment when the chopper touches down.

Then you hit "done" and watch the action. The medic hits the trail, the scout keeps climbing, the sniper creeps through the weeds, the chopper heads for the landing zone, and the three machinegunners pick up their rifles and go to meet it. Time pauses again after the scout sets up the comm relay, and you go through the whole thing again.

This would be less applicable to multiplayer scenarios.

Definitely, its a single player thing, but this whole game idea really leans towards a single player campaign anyway. I like this whole idea of freeze time (Im not sure what else to call it). I think youve explained the whole concept very well. The initial freeze would of course take place when the encounter begins.

In a way, its reminiscent of XCOM Apocolypse, where it would pause the action and say "Enemy spotted" and give you a tick box to say dont pause on this event in future, but taking it a step further, as this system will also pause when a unit has fulfilled an order.

Im glad I brought these game ideas up on here, Ive found these discussions very helpful and Im extremely grateful to the GameDev.net community for the suggestions.