Apparently, we’re not getting too plot heavy yet, so no spoiler tags here! Next part will tho.
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PART TWO: Story
I don’t want this to be an overly serious game, I want it to be cute and charming with my signature dorky humor. I find this makes it easier to make a short game fast as it allows me to make up silly things to explain things that would otherwise make a game too deep, or force me to be too realistic. (Like I want to be able to make some recipes not make sense all the time, and just use a dumb joke)
I imagine that you are a hero who lives in their hometown and then is sent to the capital to talk to the king and queen. Maybe they specifically summon you to rid them of some evil, maybe you go there to try and complete one of their challenges and be named a Monster Slayer or something.
Honestly I’m leaning towards the ‘complete challenges/become Monster Slayer’ storyline, as it instantly sparked the idea of having some sort of rival in the story line.
We may be a silent protagonist.
Now I’m going to look at our cast. Here are links to the 3 KemonoSD packs:
https://aekashics.itch.io/kemonosd-character-pack
https://aekashics.itch.io/kemonosd-character-pack-vol2
https://aekashics.itch.io/kemonosd-vol3-character-pack
We’ll first identify characters that are easy:
The first two packs have the King and Queen. These will be the ones giving you your first quest at the castle. They tell you how the Hero Training Test goes so you can be a licensed Hero. You’ll go to a Quest Master to get your next Quest (which will be linear at the beginning following the story line, with maybe small generic quests as options. Story won’t progress unless we follow the Main Quest line)
Woah, woah, woah. I promise you these ideas are just coming as I type this! We (okay, I) just thought of this Quest Master (honestly influenced by the Quest and Guild Masters in the 3rd KemonoSD pack)
Apparently the storyline will progress by following the Quest Master’s Main Quest quests. These will be set quests with a set order that follow the story line. There will also be a pool of smaller, simpler quests that will randomize, such as fetch quests, rescue quests, etc.
Now that we are introducing a new feature (Quests! Random Quests!) We have to ask: is this out of scope?
Well, given quests, even random quests, fit the dungeon crawler theme, and add for the ability of post-game play (‘specially if we save some quests for post-game), I say this is within scope, but like the crafting, can go out of scope.
PART TWO-N-HALF: Back to Scope
With the crafting system and the quest system, this game can get much larger than anticipated, because while we may be able to make the storyline 1-2 hours, these systems could grow to be very large for the post game, which I don’t want to set a set playtime to. So to keep this game and these systems small, we will come back and determine how many total recipes and how many total non-storyline quests there will be.
Despite limiting the non-storyline quests to say….10….we can make them feel larger by setting them with their own changing variables such as:
Have Play find (1 or 2 or 3) (mushrooms or flowers or rocks) and deliver to (NPC 1 or NPC 2 or NPC 3) for reward of (100G or 120G or 5 Fish or 5 Ore)
Which that 1 quest can have…I don’t feel like doing the math, but a lot of similar but not same quests. These will all be kept in variables such as:
Variable 1 (Quest 1) = Quest 1
Variable 2 (Quest 1 Var 1) = 2
Variable 3 (Quest 1 Var 2) = item 12 (mushroom)
ETC ETC ETC I hope you get the idea.
So, to keep scope, we’ll limit side-quests from the Quest Master to 10 Mad Lib style quests, and keep track of the quests he has with variables. Probably will have to make a common event that holds all the info on the quests or each quest mad lib has it’s own common event that gets called to create the quest or something. It’s totally do-able
Which now probably means that we will want/need Yanfly’s Quest L (wait, lemme hop to yanfly’s site to get the name right) Yanfly’s Quest Journal System to have the player know what quests they are working on.
Ehhhhhhh….I don’t know if I want to learn how to use that plugin. I could make a rule that the player only can work on one quest at a time, and then use an easier method like a common even menu option of ‘Talk’ that will have the player remind themselves of what quest they are on.
When we are actually starting to build the game mechanics, we’ll study Yanfly’s plugin and see if it’s within scope to learn to use that and make it work with our Mad Libs type quests. If not, I like the talk option, or a Yanfly Common Event Menu where we use, say, 3 common events to record what the quest is using the variables, etc, etc, etc.
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For now I’m planning for these posts to go up on Tuesdays and Thursdays and as I get ahead with this project the logs will either come more often, or just be like two in one.
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Thanks for reading and God bless,
Meike Kima