Brainstorming and more Gameplay

Yet another day of some great brainstorming. Us three developers got together again last night and got some more ideas out. We attempted a prototype some but instead called it a night.

The major discussion of the night was the gameplay flow and the battle system, which had actually been a major topic of the previous night as well. Yesterday I had an idea for a battle system and presented that to the other two. With much consideration and some constructive input we came up with a very interesting battle system that actually solved our gameplay issue. Here is what we got for the gameplay...

The camera for the game sits above the ground far enough so you can see several towns, forests, and mountains. The towns and paths in between the towns are represented by nodes. These nodes are the only places your units can move (That was mostly recap).

For the gameplay flow we originally had a real time system but it is now changed. Instead each unit and town for all players receive a turn. Whenever it is their turn, the unit or town is able to make some type of action such as moving to another node or constructing a building. The order of turn is decided upon by two things, the unit's/town's speed and the previous action the unit/town took. Each action has a time cost, like moving to a node might cost 50 units of time while attacking an enemy would cost 75 units of time. The larger the cost the longer until the unit's/town's next turn. The speed attribute comes in by simply lessening the cost of the action and consequently lessening the time until its next turn.

That was all gameplay...Soon I will write a post about the actual battle system and how it works.

Prototyping

One thing Robbie suggested that we do is some prototyping, which I had considered before but wasn't convinced it was necessary. After some convincing, we decided to start with a paper prototype, which basically means to play through a game session with pen and paper. The goal of this would be to see how well the gameplay mechanics work and be able to quickly get an overview of what needs to be altered/removed.

We decided to go with the paper prototype because it seemed to be the easiest way for us to prototype Puni Puni Kingdom. We discussed Flash as an option but decided it would be possibly too much work.

Last night, Aaron, Robbie and I had a 4 hour session attempting to do the paper prototype. This brought up several questions about how actual gameplay will work...and it seemed like each question branched out to another five questions. By the end of the night we had come to the conclusion that we have lots of wonderful gameplay concepts but they need to be molded into not only playable but enjoyable gameplay elements that would all fit together to form a fun and coherent game.

We did begin some of that molding but there is still much more to do. I believe tonight we will have another molding party (not to be confused with a Tupperware party). So we will see how things go!

Programmer Introduction

Well, I think it is only fair that since our composer got an adequate introduction that our other, more recent, addition to the team gets one as well. His name is Robbie Iannucci. He is technically a programmer but he is already contributing more than just that. Even with this is his first game project, he has brought invaluable experience to the team that is certainly going to take Puni Puni Kingdom to the next level. So expect to here much more about him and possibly even from him!

Robbie and met through mutual friends (our wives) and have become friends since. So he is a local addition to the team, which has lead to him being able to join and contribute to the brainstorming sessions.

Composer Introduction

I have been talking to a very talented composer for awhile now and he agreed to work on Puni Puni Kingdom. This all happened earlier on but I would like to introduce him now. His name is Kevin Penkin. He has some composing experience in the indie community and hopes to break into the game industry one day.

I first came in contact with Kevin through his wonderful music. I saw a post on the XNA Creators Club forums where he was offering his services. As soon as I began listening to his music I knew that he was the right composer for PPK. His work is wonderful and I know that it is only going to get better. Check out his sites, listen to his music and support him!

http://web.mac.com/happyramenstudios/Happy_Ramen_Studios/Main_Page.html
http://www.youtube.com/user/happyramenstudios

I cannot wait to hear what he comes up with for Puni Puni Kingdom.

First Rendering!

Alright! Got something to show up on the xbox 360.

This is the splash screen. It is very basic and may possibly change in the future. For now the screen starts with just the "play" visible. The little red dot scrolls across the screen from the right and once in place "SAGA" fades in. Then the entire screen fades out and will go to the title screen. The splash screen lasts for about a total of 7 seconds, but the player can press a button to skip it.

This is actually taken from my project last year. But still, it proves that things are working. I had to do some debugging to actually get it to work though haha...

Needless to say, I have gotten a lot done today. I spent a good 12-14 hours on PPK today. Nothing like a good work day! :D

Manager Project Intro

This blog has unfortunately been lacking updates so here is one!

Not more than an hour ago I finished programming what I am calling the 'manager project'. This project is a base game project and will work for nearly any 2D XNA game. This project, manages the game's audio, graphics (2D), input, storage, gamers (for xbox360), and scenes (like the title screen).

I use the term 'finished' lightly because I have yet to test it. However, much of this code was previously written a year ago for another project so it was a matter of porting it over to this new project and cleaning it up (mostly documenting). Fortunately, all of that code had been tested a decent amount.

Here is a class diagram of it (not all that pretty).


At the moment this project stands at about 3000 lines of code. Not too bad to start off with. I am sure that as Puni Puni Kingdom grows so will this project. My hopes for this project is that It becomes a strong foundation project for XNA games that I can use in my future games. There is also the possibility of this project receiving a public release if things go well.

Now I can get to programming the game specific code!

Free 12 month Creator Club Trail Membership

I thought that this information may prove to be useful if you want to deploy any XNA games to your Xbox360 (like Puni Puni Kingdom). Of course you must own an Xbox360 for this to be worthwhile, so if you don't then you can stop reading now. Even though the release of PPK is far away, doing this will enable you to play it before the release (beta).

Here are details on getting a free 12 month creator club trail membership.

• First off go to Creators Club Membership and follow the first 3 steps.
• Once you get to step 4 go to Dream Build Play and register to the contest
• After registering go to your My Account and on that page you will see the code for your trail membership.
• Now go back to the membership page and follow step 4.
  

I recommend you do this. It only takes a few minutes and may save you up to $100. It would have saved me $50 last summer. One thing to note is that this offer ends July 6.