[Role Playing Game] The Great Travel

[May90]

I am making an RPG/Adventure campaign heavily based on dialogues, cinematic, mini-games and original NPCs. No leveling up or fighting at all, the game is focused on something that rarely or never presents in usual RPGs or strategies. Two gigantic maps are already done, tons of dialogues and quest ideas done too. However, since I am far from a professional map-maker, implementing some ideas takes a lot of time. I cannot evaluate how much it will take me to finish this campaign (if it finishes ever at all), but surely not less than 2-3 years (maybe less if some people will agree to help with testing). However every finished map, even not tested really well, will appear here (do not expect it too soon though).

World
Campaign takes place on some far away planet inhabited by humans, orcs and many other minor races. About 2,000 years ago, after industrialization, humans and orcs built up two empires fighting each other for many ages. 50 years ago piece treatment finally was sealed, and old enemies united into a single empire which quickly started expanding through the planet. Everything went well for The Empire until its borders touched the elves who before have never had any contacts with humans or orcs. Elves surprisingly proved to be able to hold The Empire's expansion and even drove them back a bit. At this moment the main story starts.

Story
Human captain among thousands others arrives in an encampment at the border of elves. Soon his life will change significantly. I must say right now that, though the very following events remind the ones of the movie Avatar (captain is taken as a prisoner by elves and soon starts liking them), it is only for a while since soon elves will be conquered by the Empire and the captain will have to run away from The Empire, not alone of course, but with his new elven girlfriend. Then they travel between different countries and islands, exploring - this is the main part of the campaign and the very reason of why I decided to make it.

Features
- Many-many dialogues and cinematic with original NPCs (among which are crab-nerd, grunt with some... eh... toilet problems, skeleton-actor who is looking for a skeleton-girlfriend, lava-elemental who wants to become water-elemental and so on).
- Logical tasks and mini-games all around - I promise that there will be not a single quests of common "Bring me something" or "Kill an evil beast and I will give you $500". The campaign is generally very peaceful, there will be very few times when you actually have to kill.
- Infinity of external musics and sounds. I use only the ones I can find on Youtube so that there is no rights violation, and there are really many of them: almost every NPC will have some musical theme associated with him. The maps will be heavy on size, but it is a single-player campaign so, I think, it is OK.

Undecided
- I am not sure whether to use or not the multiple choices dialogue system, as in Dragon Age, for example. I wonder if the campaign actually needs it and it will take 3 or 4 times more to write dialogues then.
- It is difficult to decide if it is better to use many small maps, rather than few, but gigantic maps. Small maps are easier to test and faster to load, but I already have 3 created gigantic (maximum size allowed in the WE) maps with a lot of doodads, units and buildings.
- I liked the Bioware style of DLCs so I think about making also many mini-maps with short stories of some NPCs. Will people be really interested in this? I do not know if I will.

Problems
- The main problem is my English. It is not bad I hope, but it is impossible to avoid some mistakes and uncertainties.
- It takes really long to create so many texts and NPC biographies. Usually game developer companies have many writers working who's main job is to write the texts, and I am trying to do all this alone. So I may give up one day, I admit.
- I am afraid that the result of the work will more or less resemble a book rather than a game. So many texts and cinematic are nice, but how much time will be left for an actual gameplay? Already the starting cinematic of the 1st level takes about 7 minutes to finish, and one of usual conversations, while being reach on events, takes more than 10 minutes.

So this is an announce and, you know, many announces remain announces forever, so I cannot promise anything. Any tips, suggestions will be appreciated, especially ideas for original mini-games, NPCs or quests. Interesting triggers to work this.

Special thanks to RDZ who's maps inspired me to start working on it. You are the best!

 

[May90]

OK, first question comes. Since one of two main heroes in my campaign is a crazy joker, I want the text to be written respectively. Quest descriptions should also be in the same style. However they tend to be something like this (example from one of my quests' description):

The smartest tauren in the world does not let Ray to commander. Time to slay the beast!
Just kidding. Actually it is time to find the password. How to do it? Figure out yourself, enough advices for now.
Still here? OK, you need to talk to somebody who knows the password and surely will tell Ray it immediately.

Is this style proper? I mean, it ideally builds in to the atmosphere, but is not it a bit rude to the player? Not even that the player may get offended, but does it look stylish or professional at all?
Maybe it is better to, saving the same style, make these descriptions look as made by Ray, so that there is no links to the player? Like this:

The smartest tauren in the world does not let me to commander. Time to slay the beast!
Just kidding. Actually it is time to find the password. How to do it? Damn, it's blasted hard.
Still reading my note? OK, I need to talk to somebody who knows the password and surely will tell me it immediately. Otherwise somebody may get hurt...

 

[bisnar13]

Can you upload/attach the maps? I wanna try

 

[May90]

Eh, I have 3 maps and many different test mini-maps with some implemented ideas, but right now nothing is completed enough to upload it. I think the tutorial map (pre-alpha) will be finished by Wednesday/Thursday which is super-short and shows main concepts of the campaign.
I have also some general problems with optimizing some triggers which right now tend to cause leaks or fail in some special cases. As soon as I solve them and finish the tutorial map (short map with a murlock explaining the game, a conversation between the murlock and a crab and a mini-Dota quest), I will upload it.

 

[bisnar13]

Okay, I'll wait

 

[May90]

Don't think I am lazy though (I am, but let's ignore it for now). I will post here from time to time what has been completed in this time.

So yesterday I finally implemented cinematic system with "unlimited" transmissions, thanks to Adiktuz who pointed out some ideas. Right now generally the main tasks are music looping (I have a working script for it but it is far from perfect and sometimes may interfere with something) and Dragon Age-like dialogue chooser, when you want to talk to someone and choose from different topics. Also a TD-like quest is being done, though I haven't even started balancing it (and possibly it is to be redone completely from scratch due to a bugging main idea of collecting money).

 

[May90]

OK, a few screenshots of a VERY VERY ALPHA of the first mission. Terrain is to be edited hard, dialogues to be fixed and quests added.

UPDATE
Right now the work is mainly being done on some technical things with scripts, the game itself aside. A Diablo-like system of choosing from different topics to talk about is already functioning properly, but there is a problem with floating texts strangely disappearing from time to time. This problem is the last general issue I can think of; after it's solved, the whole system will be finished and it will be the time to start working on the game itself.
Though some work was also done over the terrain today. I think the terrain in the first mission is already pretty close to what it will be in the end, though doodads will be changed significantly.

UPDATE
New screenshots added from the first level (into the head post). Terrain is now close to be done, added some terrain effects. Dialogue system finally implemented. There will not be any changes in the system itself, only (perhaps) in how the interface looks, and some triggers will be rewritten in pure JASS (to remove possible leaks).
As for the tutorial I promised, I'm still modifying its terrain. Also some changes should be done to the triggers for mini-Dota game since it is a bit buggy.

 

[May90]

The worst thing happened I feared most: I bought SC2.

What the hell, the worst?!

Right. As I found SC2 Editor tools to be much more promising and easy to use, I decided to freeze this WC3 project and transfer it to SC2 engine. I still have not decided though if the lore will be the same (if I find appropriate Elf, Orc and Human models in the Internet, I will possibly do it), or move to Sci-Fi. The later is the most probable since, as I think about it, it will give much more freedom in building up the lore. Still there will be an Empire conquering the new worlds and some mysterious race like Navi from the Avatar movie resisting the Empire.

Anyway, this thread may be closed. Project is cancelled.