Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Reevaluating Development
A lot has happened in regards to PPK this last week. First we decided that it would be better to continue development using C++ instead of XNA and then we made an even bigger change of plans. Before saying what it is, I will give you the context of the story.
PPK started as a game project with two focal points; finishing a game and making a good game. Our original hopes was to release the game in time for DreamBuildPlay, an XNA contest which ended earlier this month. As we began designing more, we came up with more and more ideas. Now PPK is a large project that instead of finishing in 3 months is going to take easily 2 years. In some regards this is extremely unfortunate, especially when considering that this is exactly what we were trying to avoid; however, I really believe that this game concept was never meant to be a small project. We reached a crossroad earlier this week with the realization that this project is much grandeur than we thought/hoped.
So I bring you news with both glee and sorrow that PPK is going to be pushed onto the back burner to make way for another, much smaller, project. Before running to your mommy crying over this news, know that we still have hopes to finish PPK in the future once we get more development experience. Also Aaron is going to continue to design the game trying to flesh it out completely so that when we are ready to move back to it we can do so at full speed. So do not fear, PPK's end is far from here.
Now I am sure you are wondering what this alternate project is that is taking precedence over PPK. A number of you already have heard of the project from when I was working on it last year - Deus ad Bellum (final name pending). As I wrote last year...
Deus ad Bellum is an original battle card game. It is a completely unique card game most similar to Magic the Gathering with several RPG elements mixed into it for good measures. It is competitive one-on-one online play with a matchmaking system implemented to set you with players of your skill level.
I am most definitely excited to be working on this project again. It has some solid gameplay elements and is something that wont take years to develop with a small team of developers. I will most likely start a development blog for Deus ad Bellum and when I do I will post a link to it here. My hopes are that we will make more continual progress on Deus ad Bellum than we have been on PPK.
I hope everyone here continues to support us as we move forward. Thank you for all of the support thus far!
PPK started as a game project with two focal points; finishing a game and making a good game. Our original hopes was to release the game in time for DreamBuildPlay, an XNA contest which ended earlier this month. As we began designing more, we came up with more and more ideas. Now PPK is a large project that instead of finishing in 3 months is going to take easily 2 years. In some regards this is extremely unfortunate, especially when considering that this is exactly what we were trying to avoid; however, I really believe that this game concept was never meant to be a small project. We reached a crossroad earlier this week with the realization that this project is much grandeur than we thought/hoped.
So I bring you news with both glee and sorrow that PPK is going to be pushed onto the back burner to make way for another, much smaller, project. Before running to your mommy crying over this news, know that we still have hopes to finish PPK in the future once we get more development experience. Also Aaron is going to continue to design the game trying to flesh it out completely so that when we are ready to move back to it we can do so at full speed. So do not fear, PPK's end is far from here.
Now I am sure you are wondering what this alternate project is that is taking precedence over PPK. A number of you already have heard of the project from when I was working on it last year - Deus ad Bellum (final name pending). As I wrote last year...
Deus ad Bellum is an original battle card game. It is a completely unique card game most similar to Magic the Gathering with several RPG elements mixed into it for good measures. It is competitive one-on-one online play with a matchmaking system implemented to set you with players of your skill level.
I am most definitely excited to be working on this project again. It has some solid gameplay elements and is something that wont take years to develop with a small team of developers. I will most likely start a development blog for Deus ad Bellum and when I do I will post a link to it here. My hopes are that we will make more continual progress on Deus ad Bellum than we have been on PPK.
I hope everyone here continues to support us as we move forward. Thank you for all of the support thus far!
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Recent News
It has been nearly two weeks since the last update. Unfortunately not too much is new. However, in the past few days I have laid out more of the code and am going to try to focus on PPK more. Work and PPK is what I am going to live in breath for awhile. So expect some more updates a little more frequently.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Server Up - Time for Progress
Alright! Got the server up (kind of). The basics are there and hopefully in a month or two we can get a Linux server up with the ideal setup. At least now we can begin to make more progress on the game's development.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Server Excitement!
I will do my best to spare you of most of the details; however, I do want to keep everyone up-to-date with the project's progress. Recently, we have been attempting to get a server up and running that will run Subversion (SVN) and Trac. Both of these software will greatly help with the development of PPK. However, some unknown force is attempting to stop us...
Our first attempt was with an old computer that we revived - or so we thought. After one day and several trips to Fry's Electronics, we got the computer up and running with Ubuntu on it; SVN and Trac would come later. Two days later the motherboard and/or CPU became "crispy". Attempt #1 = death.
Currently, my desktop is attempt #2. Things are a little tricky considering that my network experience sums up to about... nothing. Needless to say, it has been painful and frustrating. Even though attempt #2 is still alive, I have considered giving it a similar fate to attempt #1. I am hoping that soon I will get some amazing much needed help and finally get everything up and running correctly. Once this is done real progress can once again commence.
Our first attempt was with an old computer that we revived - or so we thought. After one day and several trips to Fry's Electronics, we got the computer up and running with Ubuntu on it; SVN and Trac would come later. Two days later the motherboard and/or CPU became "crispy". Attempt #1 = death.
Currently, my desktop is attempt #2. Things are a little tricky considering that my network experience sums up to about... nothing. Needless to say, it has been painful and frustrating. Even though attempt #2 is still alive, I have considered giving it a similar fate to attempt #1. I am hoping that soon I will get some amazing much needed help and finally get everything up and running correctly. Once this is done real progress can once again commence.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Detachments!
For some reason I had completely forgotten about one of the components of a company. Here is what I wrote about them in our GDD. :)
One additional component of a company is the detachment, which will provide the company with a passive trait/attribute. Such as Scavenger Punees will recover some resources from the battlefield if the company wins or having a Water Puni detachment might recover some of the company's HP after battle.
I hope you like the idea of detachments - I know I do!
One additional component of a company is the detachment, which will provide the company with a passive trait/attribute. Such as Scavenger Punees will recover some resources from the battlefield if the company wins or having a Water Puni detachment might recover some of the company's HP after battle.
I hope you like the idea of detachments - I know I do!
Friday, July 10, 2009
Battle System Details
If you haven't read the previous post about the gameplay flow, then I recommend you do that here.
First we'll get all of the vocabulary out of the way. The unit used for fighting is a company. A company is made up of 2+ squads and a Puni Captain. A squad is made up of many punees but is limited to one puni class (Water Puni, Ore Puni, ...ect). A Puni Captain is a special type of puni that leads the company. It will have a level, some other stats and even skills. The company as a whole will have only a congregate of stats, most of which will probably be hidden from the player.
As mentioned earlier companies are the unit used for fighting and so they are the unit you move around on the map via nodes. When it is a companies action turn and they attempt to move to a node occupied by an enemy company then they attack. When attacking an enemy you will be able to choose which enemy company to attack if there are multiple of them. Then you select an tactic to take. There are many different tactics and their availability depends on a few variables; the company make-up, the weather and some are learned by leveling up. Different tactics will have different outcomes so choosing the correct tactic is important.
Once a tactic is chosen, your company attacks and damage is done to the enemy company. After the attack you can choose a defense maneuver for an additional stamina cost.
This is basically how the battle system works. In some ways the gameflow and battle system are a mixture between a tactical game like Final Fantasy Tactics (amazing game) and a strategy game like Civilization. I am really excited about this. It is going to be a very unique game and have much to offer!
First we'll get all of the vocabulary out of the way. The unit used for fighting is a company. A company is made up of 2+ squads and a Puni Captain. A squad is made up of many punees but is limited to one puni class (Water Puni, Ore Puni, ...ect). A Puni Captain is a special type of puni that leads the company. It will have a level, some other stats and even skills. The company as a whole will have only a congregate of stats, most of which will probably be hidden from the player.
As mentioned earlier companies are the unit used for fighting and so they are the unit you move around on the map via nodes. When it is a companies action turn and they attempt to move to a node occupied by an enemy company then they attack. When attacking an enemy you will be able to choose which enemy company to attack if there are multiple of them. Then you select an tactic to take. There are many different tactics and their availability depends on a few variables; the company make-up, the weather and some are learned by leveling up. Different tactics will have different outcomes so choosing the correct tactic is important.
Once a tactic is chosen, your company attacks and damage is done to the enemy company. After the attack you can choose a defense maneuver for an additional stamina cost.
This is basically how the battle system works. In some ways the gameflow and battle system are a mixture between a tactical game like Final Fantasy Tactics (amazing game) and a strategy game like Civilization. I am really excited about this. It is going to be a very unique game and have much to offer!
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