RPG ideas?

T

TheRatKing

Vault Dweller
Hey guys, I'm coding an RPG based on the book "Flatland," and I was wondering if you had any suggestions/ideas.
It would probably help if you've read the book, but the general gist is that the main character is a square in a 2 dimensional world. The world is populated by different shapes, with more vertices = higher social status. Triangles are the lower class, and the less scalene you are, the higher up you are in the lower class. So side regularity and number of verteces = Good.

also women are 1 dimensional line segments. Heh.

In the book, the sharpness of your vertices indicates how good a fighter you are, which makes character development complicated. If more sides = less good at fighting but better socially....hmmm.

Anyways I'm still not sure where I'm going to go concerning the mechanics and technical details (turn based or rt? etc) so I'm turning my eyes to you, NMA, for suggestions concerning anything from story to mechanics to interface.

Thanks for the input.
 
Sounds like it would be fun if it followed The Legend of Zelda formula.



In-depth story/technical stat and combat system would just give me a headache and loose my attention dealing with simple geometric figures all day.
 
For some reason, I'm imagining similar gameplay to the very first levels of Spore, where you more or less just go around (going 'up' and 'down' in space as your size changes), interact with other things and occasionally change some of your traits in the 'evolve' menu.
 
TheRatKing said:
Alas, I have never played a legend of zelda game. Care to explain in more depth?
Click to expand...

It's simple, the gameplay is mostly divided between exploration and main dungeons.

The exploration is different in most zelda games, but the dungeons' mechanics are really similar.

1. Explore the dungeon, solve some puzzles, frustrate the player as he finds that some puzzles can't be solved.
2. Fight against a Sub-boss character. The reward is a new item which makes exploring and solving the dungeon much more fun. All of the frustrating puzzles before can be solved with it.
3. Once the player learned and is familiar with the new item, pit him against the final boss, which will test his new skills(as well as some old ones probably).

That's pretty much it, it's a pretty good balance between challenge, and quite rewarding to visit and beat old areas of the dungeon with the new item.

And yeah, I don't know what the Legend of Zelda formula has to do with this. :P
 
I'm thinking more in line with what Skull was talking about in terms of mechanics. I kind of want this to be more story/character interaction oriented though. I feel like the setting can provide a lot of really humorous situations and possible quests n' stuff.

EDIT: quick update for those who are even remotely interested
http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=xtddfiaakf0ekzh
here's a snapshot of what I've got so far.

The "bot" is the red pentagon, and you control the brown square.
I've fooled around with some seeking and evading algorithms for the bots, and the text is my quick attempt at making a fallout-like dialog box. Every character and object has some text associated with it for when you "look at" (click) it.

Obviously this isn't much but I thought you guys might be interested.
 
I've read flatland. Quite a good little story. Written by a math teacher a century ago to keep things interesting for his students.

Not sure an RPG really fits the world, but I like the story a lot.
 
Quick update:
As I'm writing this completely from scratch, it's taking me a while to code the engine etc (also who knew dialog would be such a bitch?!)
As of now I have a
-grid based pathfinding system for all shapes
-rough AI - (constant-bearing persuit and evasion, wandering, etc)
-collision avoidance for NPCs
-collision detection and resolution for all shapes
-rough (ROUGH) dialog system, with each choice having a specific consequence (i.e. respond, end conversation, chase after player, run away, etc.)

right now I'm taking a sort of mental break due to school work and other projects, but ill probably get back into it soon (oh I don't want to see another XML file for years)

Not sure an RPG really fits the world, but I like the story a lot.
Click to expand...
Just for clarification, this is going to be entirely in flatland (not spaceland or anything)
It might just end up being an adventure game.
I liked the setting because I feel it has a lot of potential for interesting and original stories and characters. That's what I'm interested in the most.
 
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