Questor Video Game Plot?

[Madmoonie]

I agree. 4 seems best. Like Zelda 64, grab heart containers to increase meters, hearts to fill that meter, and....uh....something lux-related to increase lux energy and capacity. A top down view, with a main quest, with some smaller mini-quests scattered around the village he is in.

[RHJunior]

floating sparks of lux that drift around the terrain?

[Madmoonie]

an awesome idea.

[Yuoofox]

Oh, I have a question for you, Mr. Ralph.

We're considering hosting our program code on sourceforge.net, a place where people can collaborate on programming projects.

Who do you want to be able to contribute to the project? Should it be just the people on this forum (ie people that we know), or should it be open to the general public, or what? (I don't know quite how sourceforge works yet, but I thought I'd ask before I start creating an account this weekend.

[Mook]

From what I've read on their docs page, anyone who wants to contribute and is registered in Sourceforge can. We can't lock interested parties out, even if they don't meet our criteria; all we can do is track which account introduced or fixed which bug or feature. 'Tis the nature of open-source.

And the sparks thing is exceedingly doable; it only needs an appropriate sprite and the most basic of AI (i.e., rand()%4).

[Cuerden]

floating sparks of lux that drift around the terrain?

...That's ingenious.

[T.s.a.o]

It's not my degree, but I could show this to the VGP and Game art students at ai. THey might be able to produce a more 'Advent Children' type of game.

[Cuerden]

It's not my degree, but I could show this to the VGP and Game art students at ai. THey might be able to produce a more 'Advent Children' type of game.

I dunno. I've always thought that cartoons looksed better if they stayed 2D.

Grania, maybe?

[Shyal_malkes]

the easy part about the current main three adventures Quentyn's been on (gargum, rat king, royals) is that between the three of them he's only needed to use wildcard once! and in a game that could be put into a cutscene, what that means is that it wouldn't be necesssary to program a 'random effects' weapon, you could just have it as being more legendary then anything and set up a random effects generator for whenever he visits the testing area at the artifactors college.

it's odd, how little he's actually used that thing.

[Gizmo]

I dunno. I've always thought that cartoons looksed better if they stayed 2D.

Grania, maybe?

TOTQ in 3D?
-gizmo-
PS: This would be a totally different 'vision' of the game than what I'm working on. I'm still leaning towards the SNES Legend of Zelda 2D tile game, but after that, maybe a 3D game...

[Nikas_Zekeval]

N.B. On the boots: I'd suggest giving them a relatively short maximum distance followed by a recharge time (use a meter, if needed). Throw the rest of it into a combined Lux meter for Quentyn, but the boots'd be a nightmare to work with gameplay wise if they were on the collective meter. Too easy to end up with the player trapped in the middle of one of the swamp puzzles with no way back or forward. It'd also give a maimum height to walls that can be scaled, giving the glimmer rope strategic use in Sanctuary City.

Of course, the scaling walls provides a certain number of challenges coding-wise, and we might have to silently cut the boots' ability to climb walls outright. Will still get good use out of everything else they do, and the glimmer rope'll make up for it.

Hmm, RH Jr. already put in a way to limit the use of the Journey Boots. Heat. Use them too much and they overheat, as seen here. Put in a heat bar, with maybe minor damage for 'pushing' past when the boots get warm, and a cool down time?

[Madmoonie]

This would be a totally different 'vision' of the game than what I'm working on. I'm still leaning towards the SNES Legend of Zelda 2D tile game, but after that, maybe a 3D game...

So am I. Think it would be the easiest for us to produce as well as more people could contribue. I think, anyway. Like the idea of a heat bar for the boots as well.

[Cuerden]

http://npc.comicgenesis.com/d/20040725.html <- This might make a good mini-boss for the swamp level, no?

[Clef]

Hmmm...Lots of good ideas. However, too many are taking from older games.

Now, I wholeheartedly agree that those games ruled. But you see, they ruled because they were doing something new, fun, and interesting. Now, if you were to implement too much of what they had in them, you'd be ripping them off.

What's really necessary here, is to be creative about this.

The heating up of the boots: Genius. Minor damage taken for using them too much, which increases exponentially, would be better, though. Having them cooled off while walking in/over/on water would be excellent, however, and lead up to spectacular puzzles.

Rope: Useful as a hookshot. Better if you could latch it onto all sorts of things, and have a different amount of "traction" for each thing. For instance, if someone has a sign post or street lamp outside of their building with a horizontal bar--perfect. 100% traction. You can latch onto it and use it as much as you'd like. However, you can technically wrap a rope around a lot of things. What if you tied it around the corner of a building? You wouldn't have much grip--only useful if you tried to pull yourself forward like Spider-Man's zipline webbing--but it'd be enough to pull you (literally) out of a tight spot. Trying to swing or something, however, would cause you to fall. All of these different surfaces and objects could be recorded in a journal.

Daydream tutorial: Perfect. Slightly overdone, but it's great for teaching the gamer how to play the game. Most importantly, though, you DO NOT want to have messages constantly popping up. Maybe if you had something like, "Then, he brought his sword down upon their heads (X button)", where it looks like it's canonical and the controls are only added in, but it doesn't degrade the gamer. (Press the control stick forward to go forward!) Finally, the dragon at the end could be similar to the giant Heartless fight using Roxas in Kingdom Hearts 2: It's big, it's bad, it's awesome, and it /will/ kick your butt if you don't do it right. Using context-sensitive actions, however, you can kick /its/ butt and look spectacular while doing so.

Fish Poppers: They only work in water, right? What about /any/ liquid? Have an option where you hawk a loogie and throw it into the spit? Insta-'splosion. Or, if you're running through town, hey whaddaya know? Barrels of ale. *splish--POOM!!!* Creativity is key, here.

As for Wildcard, it's simple. Depending on others' actions towards you, and your actions in general, Quentyn's mood changes. Knock over a cart? Guilt, therefore sadness. If you try to talk to the cart owner and apologize, and let's say he's belligerent, anger instead. Just completed a mission and bought some yummy food? Happiness! Got that pretty girl to give you a wink? Glee! In having Quentyn's mood change, you have different attacks that randomly appear in combat. Or, of course, you could have potions meant as either mood lifters, or curses. I.E., Essence of Sadness: Originally brewed for illegal competitions, to keep opposition so down that they would refuse to fight/compete, therefore forfeitting the match. Well, for Quentyn, it'd unlock his "sadness" abilities with Wildcard.

What's more, if you could be disarmed. Wildcard goes sailing off. Not only do you immediatley lose a lot of attack power, thanks to Wildcard being removed from you, but you slowly lose stats and movement and armor and the like. In other words, you can still defend yourself in battle if you're disarmed...but if you keep yourself that way, you'll slowly lose against the easiest enemies.

As well, one could put in a hint system much like the soon-to-be-released Bio Shock's. No help, unless you need help, and then it slowly works up to what you need. It's not gonna tell you, "Okay, just latch onto the ledge and climb up" or something. However, and I'll use Bio Shock's example, "If you're using the pistol against something that requires armor-piercing rounds and /winning/, the game will shut up. If you use it and lose, of course, in the midst of losing, it'll tell you, "Try these, instead!" If you really stink, it'll simply give you a quick tutorial on how to use ammo effectively." Also, something could come up such as if you have low health and start using low-effectiveness weaopns on someone, or if you have low ammunition or lux in areas more effective, it'll recognize that you don't have a choice, and shut up.

[Dapple]

Well a "Zelda Link to the past" type game would be good in the sence I would like the item select system. There might also need to be a magic/skill system.
The 2d design would alow for faster production of the game, overall less time consuming, and increase the chances of project being completed.

A 3d inviroment would take more time but would be more competitive with todays game standards. It may also poses more ingaging game play.

[Shyal_malkes]

well, the time/work it takes to complete the making of almost anything technological is usually inversely proportional to how complex it is.

concepts are (in my unexperienced opinion) easy to implement.

3dimensional graphics are mind boggling in a programming point of view. I once tried organizing my thoughts on just the variables needed to create a wireframe 3d game, just the number of variables was mind boggling.

that's one reason I try comparing what I think a Questor game would look like to some of the older games (that and I just can't imagine quentyn holding an assault rifle throwing a plasma grenade) (waitaminute, plasma grenade? fish poppers? hmmmmm...)

[Clef]

Heh, forgot to mention why exactly I'm bringing all of this up.

I'm planning for a future in video game development; I want to be the head of my own company that publishes video games. However, in doing this, I want to be responsible for the creation of /good/ games, ones that will be remembered just like Mario, Halo, and Kingdom Hearts.

Therefore, if I were to create this game, it would be an all-out work of art, one intended to not only be fun, but remembered.

I'm envisioning an action game, 3D over-the-shoulder. I'd like to do either action or action RPG, something along the lines of Kingdom Hearts or the newer Zelda games.

Personally, I'd rather do an action RPG because you could improve Quentyn's stats instead of getting more and more powerful weapons, therefore making him grow as the adventure continues. Obviously, Wildcard would be capable of more as Quentyn grows, since he'd improve his connection with the sword as time goes by.

I am very serious about this. This is one of the games I hope to create in the future, something where people look at it and go, "Oh. Cute and fuzzy." Then, when they see a commercial, they sit in their chair and say, "Oh. I just crapped myself."

I'm seeing a real-time physics engine, hopefully at least similar to Half-Life 2. An open-environment world, since Quentyn's travelling by the gondola later on, where you can go to any area that you wish, though only certain areas will be available for you to progress in. In other words, if you went to one area and got stuck, you can leave and head to another place to play there. Later, you can come back if you want. Only very few areas would involve backtracking, because lemme tell you, nothing pisses players off more than having to backtrack ten million times.

The game would progressively get harder as you went. You can't go to one area and get totally ganked. Certainly, some areas would be harder than others, but if you went back to Freeman Downs to fight the enemies, you'd find that they're not one-hit-wonders--they'll still put up a fight. Now, the enemies in the final area of the game would require you to play very well, and the enemies backat the starting area would, of course, be easier by comparison.

[DracoDei]

Ambitious...
Just make sure Ralph gets his royalty checks so that the rest of us can be kept happily in comics!

[Dapple]

Has anyone heard about any progress on this...