Project Liangshang

[Verenti]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v713/ ... gshang.jpg[/IMG]

Those are both Placeholder Name and Title graphics for my project I'm working on.

- PROJECT LIANGSHANG -

Commencement Date: June 08th, 2006
Genre: Life Simulation

Background:
After terrible crimes commited in a previous life, you have suffered with your torment imprisioned for an eternity. Through decades, even centuries of atonement your spirit has been cleansed of the taint it once possessed; but through that righteous flame you have also lost all recolection of who you are or the crime you commited.

Can a man truely atone when he can no longer remember what crime for which he did the penance? And in that case does he feel remorse for the harm he's done or the harm he's recieved?

It matters not to you. You get a second chance at life. A second chance to fix your mistakes... or repeat them.

Is it even really a second chance at all? After all you are a man without a past.

You were born into a loving family, but your parents were taken from you at an early age. You don't even really remember them except as phantoms of the past. Your earliest memory was of a wise old man, You lived happily with him for many years under his tough but fair tutilidge. On your 10th birthday he wisked you away from the city to the quiet country side. There your story truely begins again.

Premise:
I wanted to make a game where you could play through a story as epic or as mundane as you wanted, where you could play the villian or the hero.

You start out on your 10th Birthday and from there, you have 25 games years to shape the world however you see fit. You could live as a farmer, innkeeper or a priest in your quiet little village for the rest of your life, secure in your domestic bliss or you can be the conquering hero who reclaims the country from the evil Chancellor who has taken control of the Government.

But if you don't want to deal with the Civil war quest arch, don't pursue it and it'll never be an issue.

The game works on Quest archs. There are many different quest archs which are activated from joining certain factions or doing certain things. After a certain event in the second part of the game your free to pursue this Story archs at your own pace. But beware: You're racing against the clock.

The game takes inspiration from many things and you'll see some Story archs or game mechanics which reflect this. Some of the inspirations include Outlaws of the Marsh/Suikoden, Star Ocean, Harvest Moon, Princess Maker, Planescape Torment, Breath of Fire II and even Shakespeare.

You will also be able to form relations with people and get married or swear brotherhood with a number of different NPCs. From Farmers to Princes, Travel with a truely diverse crowd.

Also your persona can be fairly diverse:
At Character creation, you can name yourself, choose your gender and one of four appearances per gender. You're then submited to an Ultima style personality test to determine your traits.

Traits grant either one time bonuses to your stats or a persistant bonus to help you forge your relations.

Once your in the game every action you undertake pushes your development in one way or the other. Train a warrior, Practice as an Apprentice Priest, Work as a shophand, Work at the end or tend your family garden and gain stat points and other bonuses appropriate to your deeds.

The Clock is broken down like this there 4 "cycles" in a day: Dawn, Day, Dusk and Night. There are 10 days in a month, 4 months in a year and 5 years in an "era". After five era, You croak. If you haven't died a "glorious death" already in battle. That's a total of 4000 "cycles" in a game.

But that's not nessicarily when you have to pack up the game and delete it from your harddrive. Because at this point you return to heaven, and recieve a debriefing on your game and your score is tallied up, which then you can then spend on a sort of New Game + to buy benefits and bonuses for your next time through. Maybe next time you won't make the same mistakes?




That's my blurb. Maybe I'll add a "features" section, but at this point it's just regurgitating things I've already said.

My progress right now is... Not very far at all. I've got the first city mapped out and I'm working on making so you can play through the game mundanely from start to finish before I move onto a combat story arch... or one that I have to design new maps for.

Any questions?

Edit: Here's some early game screens

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v713/ ... osammy.jpg[/IMG]
Why I desperately need somone else to draw things for me

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v713/ ... /kapow.jpg[/IMG]
Sometimes you can't bring the cold water to the sleeper...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v713/ ... church.jpg[/IMG]
I think it's a cool use of the mine tileset

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v713/Verenti/bow.jpg[/IMG]
Stealing Candlesticks - All the cool fictional characters do it

 

[Anonymous]

The premise of this sounds a lot like Princess Maker. That makes me happy (<3 for princess maker!)

I would probably play it just for that.

 

[Verenti]

1) This is in the east right? Why then, does everything look western. Try looking for eastern tilesets.

No, The premise was originally inspired by Outlaws of the Marsh but It's set in a European Setting.

2) that face graphic is awful. Don't use paint.

That was just a interm graphic; I wanted to see how I could get it to work.
The subtitle should have explained that. Besides I made it in PSP

3) Check your spelling, grammar and word usage. It feels like you just found as many "good sounding" words as you could and threw them in. For example:

I'm guilty on that account. I'm much more of a talker than a writer, and beyond that I find myself so hurriedly trying to transcribe my ideas to a hardcopy before I loose them that it sometimes comes out jumbled and horribly misspelt.

That makes no sense at all. "Cleanse of the taint", "through that righteous flame". Good use of vocabulary, but try to actually use them correctly.

It should read
"...your spirit has been cleansed of the taint it once possessed; but through that righteous flame..."

Now, the first half I'll blame solely on the time of night I was typing at, the second half I'll defend as imagery.

Western religion often has a place for those who commit crimes in life, and more than a few of these are fiery underworlds.

Fire is also somthing used to burn out impurities in things, like metal.

Combining those two things together and you get the image that the higher supernatural power is trying to burn the impurities of the soul out those who tarnished it in their mortal lives. Hence:

"But through that righteous flame"

Sometimes you can't bring the cold water to the sleeper...

Hmm...deep. This line just feels like you are trying to sound as deep and skillful as you can, yet 1) Makes no sense, 2) Is just plain idiotic.

In context it makes sense. The screenshot is about a guy who was taking a nap that you dunked in the pond to wake him up. It's common practice that if you REALLY want to wake somone up to put cold water on them.

But if I said it out full "Sometimes you can't bring the cold water to the sleeper, you have to bring the sleeper to the cold water."

And in context you just dunked him in a body of water.

 

[Noodle]

I would try to be careful with big vocabulary, because if anyone remembers Phylomortis from back in the RPG2000 days, that was ridiculous vocabulary and I couldn't make any sense out of it. Try to keep your words short, sweet, and to the point.

 

[Verenti]

I do remember his games.
I assure not really a concern in this game.

It takes place in a medival setting, so you won't see any overeducated grand intellectuals in a sleepy rural province. If somone does speak incredibly elloquently, I can assure you it will be rare and very appropriate. But as of now I cannot think of a single character in the game that would use speak more complex than a five year old would understand.

Hope that allays some of your fears.

 

[Verenti]

I just finished an awesome dialogue. Without spoiling it the variable used to advance it is called "Crazy voice in your head" and it's my favourite character so far. It sorta plays a role simular to the intened role of a High School Counciler when helping you find Universities. It sorta sarcastically guides you to what your character is best suited to based on their accomplishments so far in the game. I wish I could release a demo, but that would start a bad precedent and there would be hundreds of them by the time I accually released the game.

In other news:

Today I added in a system for leaving people at properties you own (like your spouse, or adventuring buddies), and reworked a lot of the events to be much more efficent.

I also added a system that will undoubtably be unpopular. If your companions die in battle, They're dead. This is a low magic world, so there isn't any ressurections. They get a death speach, a sad tune and are removed from your party. People will react to their death if the person who died was widely known too. The same thing goes for you too... except its more or less game over if you die. You do get the opertunity to start over but...

The lesson of the day is save often. I'm not making it so you have to save at save points because that would be grossly unfair considering my policy on death.

I don't know the policy on random encounters, but chances are, I'm not going to allow you to loose characters simply walking from town to town.

And if your wondering if any characters intregal to the plot, if they die if it game breaking. Well incase you haven't really been reading my posts, There are no characters who are intregal to the plot of the game (except you. The world seems to revolve around you.). If an important character dies, you'll still be able to follow the story to the end of the arch... It might be a different outcome than if that character survived, but you'll be able to continue on.

My goal is to make it so you can follow one path from start to finish. On that note, If anyone is interested in helping me out writing dialogue for characters in special events give me a pm.

To explain further, when your relationships with different characters Its going to play special events which has a chance for increasing your romantic rating and I'm not the best suited for writing all of these. (Hell, there are 7 possible romances/comrades in that sleeply little village.)

Not that I can't if no body volunteers, but writing the male and female sides to all the romances... Well, I wouldn't try to voice act them all, so why try to write for them all. That and I'm thinking of about 10 pre-marriage events for each character (The AJD to get married is currently at 10), so I may fry my brain if I try to write events for all those characters. (Not to mention that there will be more npcs to romance and/or fight beside and/or simply interact with in other *cities*)

 

[Crescent0900]

1) This is in the east right? Why then, does everything look western. Try looking for eastern tilesets.

2) that face graphic is awful. Don't use paint.

3) Check your spelling, grammar and word usage. It feels like you just found as many "good sounding" words as you could and threw them in. For example:


That makes no sense at all. "Cleanse of the taint", "through that righteous flame". Good use of vocabulary, but try to actually use them correctly.



Hmm...deep. This line just feels like you are trying to sound as deep and skillful as you can, yet 1) Makes no sense, 2) Is just plain idiotic.

You need to make some major changes to this for it to actually be of worth.

Edit: I'd also like to add, your mapping needs major work. Your rooms are too empty, and the barrels in the top image look...wrong.

I don't get it, why do you always have to bring a man down?

 

[ryanwh]

A counterbalance to the "wow this is cool i put it on my wishlist lol" posts that the vast majority of people(especially in threads with zomg realgirl authors) leave?
Myo covered most things so I'll just say yes, that was an inventive use for the mine tileset.

 

[Zoom]

No matter what other people say, this is an excellent start to what could be one of the Top Ten games of the year (or perhaps next year if it needs a lot of work).

What is really interesting about this, is the fact that though you "need" someone to draw for you, either the scene would be fine without extra pictures, OR you can just do simple ones like that as your own personal style!

Far too often, we are faced with RPGs mired in the concrete world, with barely the slimmest shimmering of abstraction. Why not turn the dial to eleven and have your audience experience something perhaps akin to Pokey the Penguin in stylization?

As for the "death in battle equals game over", you may consider that very unpopular but I seem to remember some mildly popular games that had it: Final Fantasy I-X, Phantasy Star I-IV, Chrono Trigger...

Looking forward to seeing your project advance from the sargasso of vaporware to the doldrums of demonstration.

 

[Verenti]

Past Midnight so this isn't TECHNICALLY a daily update.

I hung out with a friend of mine and had a very long game of Civ4 today so I didn't get much done on the project. That is physically.

I did implement the "Omake Shop" with the second named character: Filbert the Mimic Chest. Owner of the Omake Shop. When you die in combat you go back to heaven (where the game begins and you create your character) and your score is tallied up and then that is deposited in your Omake Points. If you scored high enough to get a "Clear" rating you get a sizable bonus. Then you're transfered to the Store where you can use points to buy things. What things I haven't decided on. Maybe hidden dungeons or even plot arcs. Or those may simply rewarded upon you for achieving a "clear" status.

That's all in now, but how your score is tallied and how high you need for it to be considered that you "cleared" the game once is still undecided.

I also reworked the character creation system. Translation: I accually added it. Well part of it. The rest was there the whole time. Lemme explain.

The game starts with some back story, You select your gender, input your name, choose an appearance. That's all been in there for a while. But then you undergo this Ultima eske personality test which pits certain traits off one another. (The traits are: Beauty, Charisma, Strong, Ambidexterious, Quick, Smart, Wise and Stalwart) I'm not happy with the current system because in all reality it prevents certain combinations from occuring, but its better than the system I had before... which was mostly nothing.

But the questions are moral dilemias (which at the moment are the LAMEST moral dilemas ever).

I came up with some ideas too that aren't implented.
I'll warn you now, I've been watching a lot of Zeta Gundam so...

But I have been thinking and I want to potray the gritty side of life too. Like have a chance your wife could die in Childbirth (I'm pretty sure I don't want to have it a possibility for the Player Character to die in Childbirth. That'd be alittle anti-climatic), Or have it if you're carrying a child on you (Because I figure infants would have to be added as inventory items to be transported from place to place) and you get in combat, that every time you get hit there is a chance the baby could be killed. After all you ARE carrying them on you in COMBAT. Sorta an incentive to leave the kids at home when you go off adventuring.

But the idea of random events occuring in the character's life and even though most of my ideas would be events of sorrow, I make a note that there would need to be more happy events to counter balance. I don't know how one would make events random, but that's an idea I got right now.

Another idea I've had for a while but never thought to write down: Since you're going to be able to view events from multiple sides, It would make sense that the characters that you fight on the other side you would also have the opertunity to recruit. Especially when that story arc is over and we become "one big happy fleet" again (I'm talking about the civil war arc obviously in this case).

Okay I'll digress for a moment to say that obviously my thoughts seems to be death orientated at this point.

But If you kill and enemy character in battle, wouldn't it make sense that they die in the game world? I mean if they were on your side and they died then they'd be dead, so why not for the opposing side as well?

This would also lead to some pretty cool scenes where you come up against a character you have a high relationship score with and then their death speech would be that much more touching.

But then again, Would you want to go around bumping off your friends just because they're fighting on the other side? I wouldn't want to.

So I'm thinking that they'll have "AI" to retreat when they get critical. Or maybe if I'm visited by the scripting fairy a script to have an ability to request the opponents surrender in battle. Or the ability to capture.

I don't know and, quite frankly, I don't need to know... yet. These are just ideas of how I MIGHT do things. I'm not really sure how I'm handling battles at all yet.

I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Oh, before I forget, Thanks everyone on your feedback, positive and negitive, even the confusing as hell one.

Depending how much work I get done later today, I might just do another update.

Note to self: Talk about doing jobs about the village next update.

 

[Verenti]

Design Diary 3

Okay, I'm going to explain the working man's game, the three types of npcs and my little dilema.

1) Working for the Weekend

Okay, you might have figured out if you're an avid reader here at Verenti-Post that this game can be completely non-violent. Right now that's the only part of the game.

There are three types of jobs: Jobs, Hobbies and Tycooning.

Jobs are paid wastes of time with low stat gain, usually as a general rule the better the pay, the worse the stat gain. You can only have one job at a time, These include jobs like an Odd Job worker at the Inn, A clerk at the Item Shop, a farmhand at the... farm, and I'm currently debating whether to add the church helper as a job because it would be a high stat gain, almost no paying job which would make it like a...

Hobby. Hobbies are more adventerous which generally encompass like Martial Arts, Studying and... Those are the only two ones I have plans to add right now (For the Home town village atleast. More hobbies as the game gets bigger.) Anyhow, Hobbies are completly unpaid, but as you progress them you may unlock rewards, or advance relationships with unexpected people. The stat gain on hobbies are rather nice as well. You may only have one hobby at a time, but any progress you make in that field is save, incase you want to pick it up later. That leaves...

Tycoons. Tycoons unlike the other jobs/hobbies is somthing you do as much as you want at the same time. Tycoons is basically owning and managing businesses. You'll be able to buy Businesses later in the game and then get cut of the profits. More on this in the NPC section, But I haven't made the specifics on Tycooning yet, so any information I give isn't really set in stone (any information I EVER give is never really set in stone)


2) It takes all kinds

There are three types of NPCs in this world: Business, Actors and Background. (A cookie for anyone who can see how I make most of my income from that)

Actors are they "highest" of the NPCs. Every actor has a Friendship and Romance values, and its possible to get every single one to join your party. There are quite a few characters in the game, but since that most of the Dialogue and story is in the story arcs and events (this IS a simulation game after all) that doesn't mean the overhead of traditional rpgs regarding a lot of NPCs. These people are the ones you can bring adventuring with you without you expecting them to die in their first combat. But not all are suited to combat. If you marry somone doesn't mean they can fight! Some people are suited only for the quiet life but as a general rule, any actor will join you if their friendship level gets to a certain point.

Business. These are the tier two characters. They just run their businesses. They offer you a job if your unemployed (best. job market. ever.) and if you can get enough money, you'll have the option to buy their store which they become your employee. Employees will join you like actors will but they all suck in combat. Suck. The purpose is, if you want to take your favourite inn keeper and put him in a better location to bring in some extra gold, or if you need an inn some wheres. Bring him/her.

Extras. Don't even concern yourself with these folks. They're just your average RPG man on the street that has no real purpose but to stand about, because if they didn't it would make the whole setting look weird.


3) Much ado about nothing

I'll have to admit it here first, Right now this whole working for a living isn't fun. It isn't fun in real life either. But I intend to fix it (the game, not real life). I think the problem right now is the lack of a goal (unless you consider death a goal.) basically you work day in and day out but the gold accumilated and the stat gains are meaningless right now and there are like three events which happen all around year 5 through 7.

So as I add in more romantic events and fine tune the "working" system, I imagine it will become more fun. Right now its sorta just like a princess maker that you have to walk to all your appointments and that's tedious. I won't let it be unfun in the end though so don't worry.

Physical Progress:

Well, I worked for about 12 hours yesterday on the project and uh... I spent a lot of those fruitlessly? I added a new event, polished some old events and spent about 2 hours making a Quattro Bajeena charset (and if you remember my artistry then you'd know how that went) which I made accessible in the game through an item you can buy in the Omake shop called "Cool Shades"... Sorry I'll stop watching Zeta Gundam while I work.

But despite the time I was making Quattro, I spent more time trying to build a game over script that works for my game (You know. Doesn't end the game?). And I gotta say: Monkeys with blunt objects.

I also fixed up the Omake Shop and New Game + so thats ... good now.

That's it for now

 

[Verenti]

Another update. Nothing revolutionary to report. Finished some more events, reworked the work system to provide less static benefits.

Also, Here's an idea consider how mortal my characters are: Critical hits having a chance to wound the person on the recieving end. For you it means Crits have a chance to kill normal enemies instantly, "Actor" NPCs would be unable to return to battle without medical assistance, and possible (as in possibly, I don't know if I want this yet) dieing from their wounds. This would apply to enemy and player actors. But this would also provide you with the chance of capturing the enemy. But if I would do that I'd probablly also have to add a skill that works only when the enemy hp is below a certain point to KO them.

But I may scrap that entire idea if it causes players to lose too easily.

Alright, I'm back to work, see you all next time.

 

[Verenti]

Alright, Weekend update.

I've designed the "world" map. Which isn't very big, but I may expand it by a few "screens", because right now it totals at around 8. That isn't enough for some of the things in my head.

Mostly these screens are empty of anything of significance, and an inn to rest along the way (because travelling at night is more dangerous).


Civic life is moving along at a decent pace. I made possibly the last overhaul of the Work system I'll ever need to do (unless I get REALLY ambitious and put in a minigame for work) so all that's required is events and you can play the game from start to finish as a townie. I am having troubles working out an event that helps start you off on whatever path you choose.. but that's simply to the sheer complexity of the event. Basically, It the entire towns reactions to various descisions you can make at that time. I'd rather have conclusion to the event fire dynamically rather than forcing the player to make some sort of choice, but I think it works better from a game play angle this way.

I guess I'll talk about another one of my systems. Currently not implemented because, without a lot of events, ethical descisions aren't really plentiful. It's called "Virtue" and you get it from doing good things. People will react to your chivalry, and it will give you a one time bonus to friendship with like some characters and dark hearted characters will regard you more poorly.

Counter to Virtue is, ofcourse, Vice. You act nasty, More nasty people will like you. But there are considerably less people who will look more favourably on vice than on virtue.

 

[Delmaschio]

Your project is really interesting.
keep it up.
I wish you good luck.

 

[Verenti]

Thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate the support.

 

[Cygnea]

Looks like there's a lot of planning going into this, and seeing someone else deal with a large number of conditional branches makes me think my project isn't so impossible. I'll be sure to check back every once and a while.

 

[Verenti]

Production for this week was halted until Monday. I had family staying over so I didn't have time to work on it.

 

[Verenti]

Alright, Today, I found not having worked on the project for a week I was quite lost. So I just polished up some of the events and wrote a new romance event and a wedding Event. Nothing important.

Neat Concept No. X:
I'm currently composing a few short plays that you will be able to go see in a theatre in the larger cities in the game. I'm also going to have Orchestras and maybe a couple Operas attendable in Game.

Shows will occur at "Dusk" time and right now, I'm shooting for a new play every "month" of game time, So that's about 20 plays per Era, essentially 80 plays total. Now that's rightly impossible to produce anything of quality of that ammount, So I might reuse some plays or make it so its only a new play every 25 days which cuts it down to about 66%.

However, If anyone would like to write a play or two for this game, feel free, It'd help me greatly. Even more so if you put the dialogue into RPG Maker first, Even more so if you actually "directed" the actions.

For music, I'm thinking a collection of Orchestral Music (any other music would be untrue to the setting) which plays a couple songs for a set duration, or until you press a button, in which case it pans back to you and you're free to walk out of the show.

Opera would be simple a play with music, Much like the Opera in FF6.

Thanks for your time.

 

[Verenti]

Hey hey. I bet you all thought I was dead.

Or you had no idea that I existed. Either way good news.

I've been considering named. Nothing final but I felt I should feel a name out here. I'm thinking any combination of these words "Twisted" "Mirror" "of" and "Fate". I hate titling things, it's always so pretentious.

This project is not dead. It's near dead. But on continual life support.

I've fleshed out some of the characters (some of which desperately needed fleshing out). I fixed some bugs, some major, some lessers.

Some major things have been reworked, some new things have been introduced, and I'm much happier with the results.

Some of the new additions include:

SaGa based HP system (no LP)
Taxes (I had the death, but forgot the taxes!)
People "live" while you're not in the room! Stat gain for stationed NPCS.

Fun stuff!

Alright, see you guys in another 3-6 months... Maybe sooner.