Underwater RPG [rewriting]

[coyotecraft]

This project takes place in an underwater fantasy world. All the character names and places are named after marine creatures and terms. It's a concept I think some people have been wanting to see in an rpg maker game.

World: The game takes place on a planet completely submerged underwater. The people are decedents of humans and merfolk, both are now extinct. The current people of this world are discovering their forgotten past and are searching for old relics and structures for clues.

Plot: The game starts with you finishing your initiation into a group of treasure hunters. Your group searches for artifacts that will help in rebuilding the ruins of Cheloni that was created by magically advanced civilization that is now extinct. Inside a locked room you and your brother find a mirror that switches your bodies. Bringing the mirror to an archeologist, you learn that the mirror needs to be recharged. Soon after, the archeologist takes the mirror and runs swims off. As you pursue him he jumps into powerful sea monsters with the intent to reactive a magical device that wiped out the ancient Chelonians. In the end it is revealed that the archeologist's plan was to combine the magical device and the mirror to reawaken Cheloni; which is actually a giant golem sea turtle buried under the sand.

Gameplay: There will be battles and exploration like every good rpg. Since it is a short game there will be no character levels. I intent for the battles to be heavy on status effects and item usage. Character stats will increase with equipment which can only be obtained by battles or found on the map. There will be no money or shops.

 

[coyotecraft]

Update-Dec 10, 2009
After going a few months without rmxp; I've lost my zeal for the whole experience. I originally wanted to make this a 2-3 hour game made within a month's time. Now I'm using this project as a way to reconnect with the forum. My first order of business is nailing down the story which is the most important so I'm taking it slow.
I got to remember that this is suppose to be a short game. So I don't want to over complicate things. I had a list of characters intended to be used in a battle party. Looking at it now I can take a couple out. I thought the body switching would make a nice story, encouraging character development and a little drama. But it doesn't feel like an rpg unless the world is coming to an end or there's a bad guy to beat up.
Since it's underwater, I want to make up some fantasy world mechanics that'll keep it from feeling too much like "the little mermaid". I don't know about you, but went I think "under the sea" I think of Disney. Xenosaga had Gnosis and FFX had Sin. I feel like I need to invent something to stand in the protagonists way. While the main character searches for a way to switch his body back he should be doing something else. Any ideas?

 

[Crystalgate]

I don't think you need to threaten the world for a 2-3 hour RPG, but a bad guy to beat up sounds nice.

One of the obvious questions when reading about your plot is why there's a body switching mirror. I suggest you relate it with the beating up the bad guy part. I know at least one way you can do it.

The most obvious use for a body switching device is of course to use it for body switching. That may have been exactly where the bad guy enters the picture. He constructed such a mirror and used it to switch body with an influential person of whatever community the hero and his group of scavengers sells their finds to. Once he made the switch, he killed his original body.

Now, the hero's brother speaks to the hero from his reflections. The same thing happened to the bad guy only in this case it's a vengeful spirit of someone he murdered and not a benevolent and loving brother. This was very much an unintentional effect as having a vengeful spirit cursing him is hardly a pleasant experience. As a temporary solutions, he orders every mirror removed from his presence.

The bad guy doesn't know how to permanently get rid of the vengeful spirit and decides to research via experimentation. He reactivates the mirror and lures the hero and his brother to it. The intention is to have those two switch body while he analyses the resulting magical/spiritual waves or whatever. He kills one of the subjects which in this case is the hero's brother in order to put them in the same situation he is in. Once he has studied them enough, I would guess that he tries to kill the survivor as well, but fails.

This would be where the game really begins. People are noticing that a certain big guy is acting strange. Only the hero however has a chance to actually figure out what's going on since nobody else even knows a body switching magic exists. The bad guy ordering mirrors removed should spark the hero's interest since the strange thing that happened to him and the strange thing the bad guy is doing both have mirrors in common.

Feel free to use and throw out whatever you wish.

 

[coyotecraft]

I was imagining the mirror being a relic left behind from an ancient civilization. They find it, switch bodies, and look for a way to change back. It seems kinda obvious now that the mirror should play a bigger role.
I guess the most practical use for a mirror that switches bodies would be to cheat death. Of coarse if something like a ghost is left behind from the original person then whoever is cheating death would be haunted by a lot of ghosts unless they have a way to exorcise them.

Anyone have thoughts on what civilization would be like underwater? Right now all I've got is a world of hunters and gatherers with hints of a past magically advanced culture.

 

[So fist]

Well I guess it depends on who or what this ancient civilization was and why their remains are in the ocean. Did their civilization somehow become flooded? Are they aquatic beings? Are they land dwelling people that chose to live under water? All these questions should help get a start on how this civilization should look.

 

[coyotecraft]

I found tvtropes.org to be EXTREMELY useful while looking for story ideas. There's categories and subcategories for every concept ever used. Including body swapping.
I like the idea of a bad guy jumping bodies and having the heroes chase him down. Every boss fight being the same guy in a different body.
Instead of killing the one brother I'm thinking it would be better if he stayed alive. It has more possibilities. Besides giving the heroes the goal to switch back, there's the opportunity for a female love interest to wonder who she's really in love with.
I fried my brain trying to work out the mechanics of the mirror and what it's original purpose was. The transferring of souls into inanimate objects and used as a power source sounds too much like a Final Fantasy plot. I'm also noticing my ideas of a ancient underwater civilization is too similar to what Disney's Atlantis looked like. Would I be over simplifying it if the reason for making a body switching device was "because they could"?

 

[Crystalgate]

There are many possible uses for a body switching mirror like life extension and just getting a better body. Rather than saying "because they could" I think you're better of leaving the question unanswered and let the player imagine some possible answers.

 

[coyotecraft]

I'm bringing the question of game-play to the table. Feel free to add your 2 cents.
Most rpg's have battles and puzzels. But since this is suppose to be a short game some of the traditional stuff wouldn't be practical. I want to have turn based battles but it needs to be more then attack and heal. Character levels wouldn't be practical, so the only point of battles would be item harvesting. Since it's underwater I don't think I could use elemental strategies either so it'll have to be heavy on status effects and immunities. I'd like to have weapon/armor upgrades but I think I'll have that depend on how efficiently they player makes it through an area.
I'm thinking now that I'll incorporate battles into the puzzels:
Lure monster A to point B to get to point C.
Clear a path/escort mission.
Punishment for going down the wrong path.

I'm still filling in plot holes right now before I start writing dialog. I'm a terrible writer but once I get that done I can do the fun art stuff for the game.

 

[Crystalgate]

The loss of elements is probably not that big of a deal. In most RPGs elements seem to work like following:
You want to nuke a fire elemental. It absorbs Fire, is weak against Ice and takes normal or halved damage from Lightning. Which spell will your offensive caster use? Alternatively you encounter an enemy who's elemental resistances you don't know and has to figure out if it's worth the trouble to test it's elemental weaknesses or if you're better of just picking the spell highest on the list. That elements actually require strategy beyond the obvious is an exception rather than a rule.

Making status an integral part is a good idea. Status often changes the flow of the battle and thus allows the player to manipulate it to a greater extent. There are other ways to increase strategy however. You can make stat ups and stat downs integral as well.

You can make it important to use the right types of attack. It's common in RPGs that spell-casting enemies have higher magic defense and lower physical defense than more physically oriented enemies. However, usually it doesn't change the strategy at all, the player will just direct the fighters to attack and the offensive mage to cast damaging spells regardless of whether the target has higher physical or magical defense. It is however possible to discourage the player from using the wrong attack against the wrong enemy. Other than physical and magical defense, you can also play the evasion game and make some enemies hard to hit unless you're using the right type of attacks. While spells are typically made unavoidable, there's no rule saying it has to be so.

As a rule of thumb, if you want to make battles more than attack and heal you have to allow the player to manipulate the flow of the battles. Enemy attacks that normally would have been executed don't appear at all because the enemy being disabled. The enemy does use it's attack, but due to a defensive spell and/or a stat down on the enemy, said attack only has a minor effect. The player launches an attack and thanks to preparation inflicts far more harm than without the preparation. That kind of stuff.

 

[WeebamNa]

First of all, I love the idea of an underwater rpg. I've always wanted to make an underwater region in a game but never got around to it. I also like the scavenging/foraging aspect.

To add to the battle system, perhaps the player could be rewarded with items by how well they fought. If you wanted to include a grade that could work, but just something like if the player uses lighting on an enemy that is weak to lightning, some kind of little notification would show and you'd get an extra item at the end. I don't know how much you want to get into scripts, but maybe you could have all kinds of hidden combos that the player would try to find out in battle to earn items, like disabling then killing an enemy, having a confused enemy kill another enemy, or having poison's slip damage kill an enemy. Another idea is an overkill system like in FFX that would reward the player if the final blow to an enemy gave way more damage than their remaining hp.

Also, in any game, I personally hate misses. I really hate games where I have to train agility or something before I can even hit something more than half the time. I don't think misses should exist, but rather instead of a miss, have that attack or spell do some measly damage. It would let the player know that that spell's bad against that enemy, but still does something, at least it wasn't completely useless. But all that's just me having been really annoyed at missing constantly in certain games. A few misses that are sort of random are ok.

 

[coyotecraft]

I'm not a really a scripter. The most I can do is tweak the existing scripts. I might be able to work out a system with events.
Maybe hitting an enemy weak point will put them into a "daze" and then using another special attack will be an instant death with a item reward. A Poach command. I think it was in Digital Devil Saga where you devour enemies in a weakened state and got an exp bonus.
In Final Fantasy 9, one character ate enemies to learn skills. But it only worked if the enemy was low on health. There was no HP bar that told you if it was low enough, you had hit them a couple times, try eating them, and if it didn't work you hit them some more. Sometimes you over shot it and killed the enemy completely. I think in this case having misses makes it a bit more challenging.

 

[WeebamNa]

For the story, right now it seems that the fact that these people are underwater is just a random added fact. I think that you need to tie that in somehow to the story with the mirror. What I came up with is that this underwater civilization holds some kinds of power, probably simply the fact to be able to breathe underwater. Then the antagonist who owns the mirror lives on the surface, discovered these people, and being hungry for their power, uses the mirror to gain control of their bodies. Perhaps at first simply to find out more about their civilization, then he swaps to a more powerful individual, like the leader of the rival scavenger team, and after you defeat him, he swaps to the body of the brother.

Just an idea I came up with while trying to tie up some loose ends.

 

[coyotecraft]

Spoiler: story

Plot wise. I was thinking of having the antagonist steal the mirror shortly after the brothers switch bodies. As they chase after him they get the impression that he plans to use an ancient doomsday device. The antagonist's true intentions are to use the device to awaken the city, not destroy it. But as he is jumping into the bodies of giant sea creatures he can't explain himself. The ancient city is actually on the back of giant stone golum in the shape of a sea turtle. A fact that isn't revealed until the end of the game when the antagonist combines the mirror and doomsday device to "become" the city. The fact that the city is mobile explains why it survived the doomsday device in the first place; since the device is what wiped the ancient civilization out.

I haven't put much thought into the character's personalities or development other then the younger brother lacks confidence and gains that while in his brother's body.
And a female character realize she was only attracted to the older brother's looks.
I've got nothing for the older brother. I was going to kill him off and use his ghost as a mentor. But keeping him alive give the character more of a reason to chase after the antagonist; to switch bodies.

I'm a little torn at the moment. I started this game for the sole purpose of making a traditional rmxp game with a underwater setting. It was suppose to be a short game, quick to make. But as I'm brain storming ideas and concepts another part of me wants to take it further and do stuff that's never really been done before. For example I was working on a tileset add-on the other day. I fail and scrapped it, but started thinking of other methods for maps. Like painting my maps, it's been done before but I've never seen it in a completed game. And if I'm painting my maps I might as well go all the way and make custom sprites too. I went through a couple ideas and then felt like sticking to the rtp edits like I was before. I'm going in circles
I've got to figure out how I'm going to do things before I start them.

I'm going to post in map improvement for help with my sea floor. Most underwater games that I've seen are either 3d or sidescrolling. The fact that you are swimming in an open environment brings up some questions on how the player moves about the map. At first I was just going to have everything be passable since logically you could swim over anything. But I thought it might be more interactive if I had a upper and lower zone to switch between. For example you swim into a wall and instead of moving around it you switch to the upper zone, move a few spaces forward, and go back down to the lower zone. Kinda like a 2-way trap door puzzle.

 

[coyotecraft]

I was drawing character concepts today. Hair styles, weapons, poses ect...
I got a design for the brothers that I really liked. But in my short sightedness I forgot that they were going to be switching bodies. Durr. So now I have to decide if when they switch bodies: do they switch weapons or keep their weapons? The older brother uses these punching claws type things which I think he would have a harder time using in a smaller body.

It could be a game play mechanic. You start off with all your skills mastered but when you switch bodies you have to remaster them. When you get your bodies back you'll have all your skills back. Then again I don't know what those skills might be. I'm positive that I won't have character levels and stats will only increase with equipment.

Edit: I updated the first post. The Plot is smoother now but I'm still working on the characters. The known characters are: The two brothers, a female love interest, and the archeologist. I want another character so that I'll have a full party of four. I want to make this character unique somehow like a Sharkman.

 

[coyotecraft]

There are these luminescent organisms called dioflagellates that glow when excited. In this fantasy world I'm going to use them as an energy source.
They'll appear as glowing particles around places like save points. They power magical devices. Larger sea creatures will eat them and condense them into an orb called an "Ovum" that has special powers. Sounds a lot like materia from FF7. I called them ovums because they look like fish eggs. Ovums will be what give players status attacks and immunities. Larger Ovums can be used to power ancient devices, open closed doors, ect...
There is a thing called Ovum Rot which takes over devices or Ovums that have been left untouched over a long period of time. For example: you activate a save point but you have to defeat the Rot before you can use it. Rot can also take over sea creatures. Every fantasy game needs a slime monster.

My fourth party member is going to be this Sharkman who can create ovums for the other players by devouring enemies. The idea is that he is compelled to devour in hopes that he'll create an ovum that can cure his lycanthropy.

Spoiler: Illustration

Using orbs/crystals feels unoriginal. If anyone have a better idea for what form a Ovum can take, I'm all ears.

 

[9robin3]

This sound so cool! I rally eould love to se the completed project^^

btw, Mister America, that is spamming, and its not very nice of you

 

[Kuahewa huki 'ino]

Well, I really like the setup, because the idea of treasure hunting is always so fun, no matter if you're doing it for academic or financial reasons, or otherwise. And I like the consideration you're making in your concept plot in which the older brother doesn't die; if there's something I realized in the evolution of my own game-type stories, it's that character story-death is entirely frivolous.

It sounds like you're revamping things to make it an--for lack of a better word, because I really hate using it in this day and age, but you know which definition I mean--epic undertaking, which is good, because the rest of your story doesn't really sound like it could fit in just a couple of hours.

The underwater thing, though (as much as other people seem to take to the novelty of it) seems a little forced, to be honest. Not so much in that it doesn't apply to your story, but more that your story could apply to any number of other settings but rather than choosing any particular one that lends itself a more-proper fit than any others, you chose the one that was "the coolest"--which, from a subjective standpoint, is great, because that's the setting you want, but from an objective point of view, not so great at all for the exact same reason.

I do like your concept art. And don't worry yourself too much about making objects separately unique from orbs. Egg-like items are shaped like that because it makes sense to the human mind.

 

[coyotecraft]

The game might go over a couple of hours. Once I actually start putting this together in the editor and see it in action I'll probably have to change even more.
I wouldn't call underwater the coolest setting. It's never been tried before which is why I have to put more thought into the gameplay.

 

[Kuahewa huki 'ino]

It's never been tried before which is why I have to put more thought into the gameplay.

Exactly, but reading your story and the attention that you're giving to it, it sounds like you want to make the plot more than you want to make the setting, but instead you're molding the plot to fit the setting. The inherent interests are clashing. It's not that it's a bad thing, but maybe you'd be best off making two separate things: a world tailor-made for your story of the three-plus-one party, and a story made specifically for the underwater world you're designing (this, of course, in theory, would take twice as much more work).

I saw the handmade backdrop you posted in your blog. It was very nice, so there's clearly a lot of work going into the underwater setting. By the same token, you're considering a lot of aspects to your story, which means that you give as much of a care about that as you do your setting. It'd just be a damn shame to ruin both a good story and a good setting by trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, if you catch my meaning.

 

[coyotecraft]

I don't really understand what you mean. I can't imagine a plot that doesn't work with any given setting.
I guess people would expect a underwater world to have fish people, dome cities, or even a reference to Atlantis. Like it wouldn't be a true underwater setting with out these things. There is something of a lost civilization, but I want to try avoiding any preexisting imagery. So no broken Roman columns or archways scattered about the ocean floor.
I read this page on TV Tropes about how people can find underwater settings boring.

One of the things I am avoiding is what the society/culture is like. You don't visit any towns in this game. The only people you see are your party members and a few archeologists. There would be too much to explain other wise. Too many questions about how they live or what they do for entertainment for example. It is a short game so any background information that isn't important to the plot would be too heavy.
I'll just leave some of it to the player's imagination.