working tittle: RPG World the idea is to do away with a game world completely and replace it with animated interactive maps and interactive images instead. if you want to go from one area to another area you simply tap on it and confirm which will then launch a travel mini game which will be kinda like an anime themed Oregon trail experience complete with random battles. i think that key point will be a MAJOR hook as not only will you need to stock up on the typical RPG inventory objects but also supplies for the trip the battle system itself can be a fully realized turn based RPG experience the vast majority of the generic battles will take place when traveling thru the mini game. however boss fights and the more challenging battles will need to be initiated thru tapping on objects of interest like NPCS and what not on an interactive animated image when you change the world to an animated interactive menu you can have all kinds of interesting social features layered in like chat rooms, auctions, arenas for optional PvP battles ect gameplay scenario: -when you finish creating your character you will start the game at your home town area. -the map that shows all of the areas you can explore will be for the most part completely open the only thing limiting exploration would be expenses for buying supplies -you will start off in a neutral town drawn as a beautiful image with animated objects in it -tap on the store to transition into another image which represents NPC merchants where you can buy/sell objects -leave and you are right back on the town image -tap on some NPC sprite that is wandering about on the image to bring up another image that represent conversations in the game. the conversation image will have a thumbnail of your character and a fully drawn visage of NPCs that you are talking to which will animate as you talk to them similar to how Tales skits would animate thumbnails -there will also be a bar or tavern in the image tap on the tavern to bring up another interactive image which has a few options. there will be a bulletin board to selecting and choosing quests just tap on it to see a list of quests take it and then you have to go talk to the NPC to start the quest. also in the tavern image is an icon that represents a live in-game chat room with other players just tap on it to flip around to the back where you have a neat little chat window flip it back to be put right back on the interactive image of the bar/tavern -tap the bulletin board grab a quest and leave the tavern and be put right back on the town image -here you have to talk to the NPC that posted the quest. hes located in a house at the top right perhaps. tap the house to bring up another image that represents the inside of that NPC's house. -here you can tap on the animated NPCs in the image to start a conversation with them. -also in most images of houses there will be hidden items and stuff just tap move drag and drop objects to find treasure in the houses sometimes the NPCs will make comments when you talk to them about it or become hostile towards you if you dont return the item. sometimes like in this case there will be treasure chest out in the open you simply tap on them to open them and voila the loot is yours other times you have a little puzzle where you have to move objects blocking treasure chests or move and object and drop it in a specific spot to reveal a treasure chest ect ect -talk to the NPC to get the quest details he also kindly helps out and invests in the supplies you need for your first trip -leave the house to be dropped back on the town image leave the town to be zoomed out into a world image which will kind of look like the new wii donkey kong world. -the very first quest is pretty straight forward you have to go to the closet area and to do that all you have to do is tap on it to launch the travel mini game -areas that you can reach with your current inventory of supplies will be highlighted others that you cant reach will be grayed out until you buy enough food and supplies -also when on the world map you can tap on your character to pull up your current form of transportation in which you can spend money on upgrading allowing you to carry more supplies, and add mods to the wagon that increase or decrease battle generation settings and buffs going into battle. -tap on the first area and hit confirm to launch the travel mini game
traveling mini game: -the traveling mini game will look and feel very much like gamelofts oregon trail but with an anime art style and at the begining just have one character until you gain party members -you will have interactive options like going faster or slower -and even be able to attack enemies at this level to prevent a battle but still earn a small amount of xp and some supplies -if you are unable to defeat an enemy before they reach your carriage or whatever form of transportation you currently have a battle will launch -sometimes you will be ambushed and forced into battle regardless -you can also upgrade your vehicle and each party member will have special abilities to employ during the traveling mini game that will make it easier to fend off incoming enemy placeholders -once you have made it to a town it becomes unlocked meaning the next time you chose to move to that area on the map you no longer have to go thru the whole mini game all over again instead you simply have to meet the supply requirements and boom you're there the enemies will come at you as you are traveling and you have to take them out on one hand you can keep your vehicle upgraded and of course level up your party as well. destroying an enemy thru the minigame still awards xp and loot as it would if you fought them in a straight up RPG battle except you wont get rare item drops and it will be mostly supplies and stuff not really RPG specific items weapons and what not also as you gain new party members each will have their own skills which will help eliminate the weaklings coming at you at lot easier perhpas allowing you to slow them down or freeze them giving you the option of slowing down your vehicle or stopping it completely to take take out the enemy first then resume movement if you dont feel like fighting it out in an RPG battle in some instances depending on how you play the mini game you can really turn the tide of battle and pre-buff and de-buff the enemies if a battle does take place it will pause the minigame and not really negatively effect the supply usage until you come back and resume traveling i think this will be a very neat and interesting idea to experiment with
battle: -if you are unable to stop an enemy before they reach your vehicle or if you initiate a battle thru the animated images a full fledged turn based RPG battle will launch -dont go cheap on this i would strive for a fully realized RPG battle engine like chaos ring but instead of sub menus i want to do something interesting like what i call "action skills" -you can only equip x amount of action skills at a time until you level up and open up new slots to assign action skills too. these action skills represent typical commands like attack, defend, magic, ect -the only exclusion is the item command its actually done via an icon at the top left (or right) very similar to the standard pause/menu button tapping this will pause live action and launch a pop up window for the inventory/game settings menu/ect. -action skills will work slightly different then typical command entry. the idea is that the action skills will be represented by rich icons on the screen and if you want to attack you simply tap on an attack icon to highlight it and then draw a line from your character to the enemy you want him to attack and a ching will sound or the device will vibrate and voila you character runs across the map and attacks the designated enemy then hops back into position -taping an icon once then drawing a line to target the enemy will only run the command once after which the character will then return to idle waiting for additional input from gamer -however if you tap the attack icon (a sword) twice and then lock in a target the command will be looped. -once you level up the attack action skill you will have a 3rd option which is attack combos. to do an attack combo you simply tap the attack button 3 times which will give you like x amount of secs to draw as many lines as you can from either one single character or multiple characters. combos will do way more damage then regular single and/or attacks and will need to be animated differently as well to make it look epic and more cinematic -the defense icon will be a little different you simply turn it on or off. when its on all of your characters will assume a defensive position this will halt all active commands until its turned back off magic: -i guess you could go elemental just make sure the animations looks sexy -the system should be completely open similar to FF7 just without the materia basically every character can equip and use spells however some characters have affinities where they learn spell mastery faster or generally do much more damage -the way this will work is you can only equip X amount of spells to a character at a time until they level up and earn more slots -spell mastery just does extra bonus damage -to launch a quick spell tap on the magic icon once and draw a line to lock in a target and the AI will choose a spell most appropriate for the situation out of the spells you currently have equipped to your character. this works pretty much exactly the same as attack but uses mp -likewise to lock in and loop magic command simply tap on the magic icon twice (which changes the icon to a different color or something) and designate a character and draw a line to target an enemy which the character will continue to hit with magic spells when the characters active time gauge is full until the character is either out of mp, unconscious, enemy was defeated or until the player dismisses the command and sets a new one -once you level up the magic skill you can do spell combos similar to attack combos this is where the animation team can really have fun similar to attack combos you have to tap on the magic icon 3 times then draw as many lines as you can before the timer runs out to initiate a combo attacking and magic at the same time: -you can tap the attack icon twice lock in and set your melee character to continuously attack by drawing a line from the character to an enemy -the icon will actually change into a timer, in order to dismiss an attack command loop simply tap on the attack icon once again to clear out the setting back to being idle with the icon returning to being grayed out (fyi this will dismiss attack for all characters currently assigned to attack) -when you have a setting locked in tapping on the icon again will not go to the next level instead it will simply dismiss the current active command and go back to being grayed out -so first lock in an attack with one or lock in an attack combo with multiple characters then tap on the magic icon and draw a line from a party member still in idle status to an enemy to lock in magic -what this will do is have one or two character attack when their active time gauge is full then return to their position, while the other character sits in the back casting magic -you can dismiss the commands at any time by tapping on an active action skill or by simply tapping on defense if you choose to have it equipped EDIT: ahh ha i found a flaw in the controls scheme. you will need to be able to tap attack set a target then have another character attack by tapping attack again and setting a target. for now im completely scrapping the idea of command loops and combos alltogether. where every command is a one shot command and you gotta keep tapping on that attack icon and continue to select targets by drawing a line from your character to the enemy.
action skills list: -attack (levels up to double attack then finally ultima attack) -defend (levels up to fortification, then finally formation) -magic (levels up to double magic, then finally mystic) -rage (levels up to revenge then finally vendetta -sacred (which levels up to holy then finally holy+) -steal (which levels up to thief, then finally bandit) -herbalist (sage, then finally sage+) -any more? attack: -tap the attack incon once then draw a line from character to enemy to do a one time attack command to the designated target. returning to idle once finished double attack: -tap once then draw a line to select enemy to do a powerful double attack ultima attack: -this is the final ultimate form of melee abilities -tap once and you can litterally choose up to 3 targets to attack back to back defend: -tap once to take up defensive positions which will pause all upcoming commands until the defense status is dismissed by tapping on the defense icon again to turn it off -when defending your characters take less damage then they would if they werent defending -thats basically all that defense does fortification: -tap on the icon to enter defensive positions pausing all upcoming commands -similar to defense but in this version has a much higher damage threshold barrier so you take significantly less damage -also when fortified status is turned on you will be able to counterattack on occasion when an enemy is about to hit your character a pop up will appear tap the pop up which is like an osculating arrow with a gauge if you tap on it when the arrow in inside the gauge you will do a full parry and damage the enemy. however miss the gauge and you will not block the attack at all formation: -tap once to enter formation mode which is fortification on steroids -once in formation depending on who you have in your team you may get buffed up while blocking and being able to parry attacks automatically -the formation status will actually change the parties formation into that of a triangle with the character with the highest defense at the front and the ones with the lowest defense in the back -when in formation there is a damage spread however a damage spread greatly decreases overall amount of damage the party takes by spreading it out across the party magic: -tap once then draw a line or drag a circle and release to designate a target area and the character will play out this command and return back to idle when finished double magic: -same as double attack but with magic mystic: -same as ultima attack but with magic instead of melee rage: -i was thinking these would be similar to limit breakers moves -as you explore you will have to do several side quest to learn new rage moves -you have to have the rage action skill equipped and have at least 1 character in hp critical status tap the rage icon to start the rage timer -during this timer the characters defense is literally quadrupled when the timer is up the character will launch a rage move on the enemy -alternatively you could lock in a rage move then heal your party and still launch a rage move when the timer is finished -as you learn new rage moves they will be selected based on the one that is currently the most powerful or best for the situation at hand -with rage you can only launch 1 rage move a battle after its used it will be grayed out for the duration of the battle -use rage enough and you unlock revenge: -similar to rage except instead of hp critical its only required to have below 50% hp -the icon will stay grayed out until a rage move can be activated -once activated not only will the defense buff be added but the character will have a small burst of hp regen -like rage you can only have it activate once during a battle however if you have multiple characters under 40% hp they will do rage moves back to back vendetta: -a super secret action skill that will be very time consuming or challenging to acquire -vendetta allows you to use rage moves multiple times during a single battle -additionally not only will your character get a defense buff and a small burst of hp regen but once the move lands it will cause the bloodlust status -when in bloodlust all attacks both melee and magic are significantly increased however the characters defense is significantly decreased -bloodlust will wear off after x amount of secs or wear off when a party member has been KO'd sacred: -this is healing magic -it should be done separately from magic all together as in you dont have to equip sacred magic spells to a character -tap it once to have a fairy pop out to instantly heal your party with 20% hp -it will have a cool down timer -as you use the sacred skill the fairy or whatever it will be will level up and heal more and more hp holy: -the next version of sacred tap on the icon once to remove low level negative status effects and replenish more hp then sacred and even revive fallen party members -as you level up holy it will learn to heal more and more advanced negative status effects as well as replenish more and more hp untill... holy+: -the final form of holy in this version all negative status effects can be undone and it fully replenishes hp and some mp and can even revive fallen party members steal: -all party members can steal some have affinities towards thievery and will have a better chance at stealing then others -tap on the steal icon and draw a line from a character to the enemy you wish to steal from -use steal enough to unlock the next level thievery: -improved the chances of getting good items when stealing -occasionally will do damage depending on how many times you have initiated thievery -keep using thievery to unlock the final level bandit: -greatly improve chances of steal for regular items (pretty much guaranteed) and increase the chance of snatching rare items -steals a bit of game currency on occasion -does damage based on characters attack stat herbalist: -this is a special optional character similar to the sacred fairy -tap it once to activate a timer that when done will have a small mini sage looking character pop out and give your party a buff. by default it will just be re gen at first until you find the secret recipes to add more and more buffs -when you complete a recipe the buff will be added and automatically cast upon the party in addition to re-gen and any other buffs you have acquired -after you level up the mini sage looking character he will learn sage & sage+ -sage is similar to herbalist it will cast all the buffs you have acquired but also cast poison on the enemies -when you learn sage you can then search for more recipes to find other negative status effects like sleep, slow ect -sage+ is unlocked when you accumulate all the recipes (easier said then done -when you activate a sage+ it will not only cast buffs on the party and negative status effects against the enemies but will also cast enemy skills to do damage upon the enemy. at first its simply a very weak monster skill and the sage pops out has a dialog and gives you a philosophers stone -basically you have to get enemies to hp critical open the item menu and use the philosophers stone to capture/learn new enemy skill -the sage+ can only have 1 enemy skill at a time tho just for FYI when an action skill levels up it doesn't replace the previous action skill. its merely an additional action skill that can be equipped so for instance you could have both attack and double attack equipped at the same time if you wish to do so i think that about covers all the action skills i can come up with at this moment. next post will detail the technical specs of the battle system
Battle System Specs: Im thinking it should be a hybrid an active time and party timer based battle system. Enemies: All the enemies will be on an active timer. Some of their moves are pretty fast to initiate (but weak) while others are slow (but much more powerful). However what I mean by "active time" is that the enemies will not sit there and wait for you to finish issuing your command before attacking you. In fact they will immediately start attack you. Party: The party will be based on an action skill timer system (simply because I dont want to have yet another gauge up on the screen). Instead Im thinking this system would work best especially from a visual perspective if associated with the action skills timer. so you enter an attack command loop for your strongest melee character by tapping on the attack icon and drawing a line to the enemy you want to attack. when the target is set the timer begins basically the sword icon turns into a countdown timer capable of displaying multiple timers counting down at once in the same space. im thinking color coordinated time hands would work perfectly. so as your first characters timer is counting down you can tap on the attack icon again and do the same for another character and another differently colored line will appear in the timer. once the line hits the bottom the character will initiate the command unless they are currently being attacked in which case the character will wait until the attack is over then initiate the command need to update some of the previous posts but for now ill list the idea here: there is no way to dismiss an entered command. however you can pause an attack by turning on one of the defense skills but as soon as you turn it off the commands will restart right where they left off. also considering a "staggering effect" for both the party and enemies as in each enemy will have a timer gauge displayed above their heads when they have locked in a command. if you hit them while its counting down this will cause the timer to glitch a bit and go back up instead of decreasing. if you hit the enemy enough times you can even shatter the timer which would be the "stagger effect" in which the enemy AI will have to reset the command. this would work both was as the enemies could do the same to one of your characters. the only way to prevent a staggering effect is to be in defense position since you would have to show a timer above enemies might not be ideal to also show an hp gauge but instead design monsters with several phases so as you do damage it shows up visually and you can see that they are getting weaker their animations might even change when they get to hp critical
gameplay: the vast majority of the gameplay will be the traveling mini game which will entertain the possibility of doing RPG battles. in some areas especially those which are not neutral you will go thru a series of forced battles. other then that there maybe other options like an arena or talking to NPCs and turning them hostile which will launch a RPG battle. the other aspect of the game is exploration there should literally be hundreds of areas on the interactive map to explore. its not a straight linear map i would go with an open map. and each area should have atleast 3-5 sub areas to explore like homes, shops, ect ect further consideration: -im thinking of having supply requirements just for new areas once you reach the area you can travel to that area again without having to worry about supply requirements. however if you have enough supplies you can spend them to fast travel and skip the traveling mini game in essence this is like an oregon trail RPG with social layers built in and perhaps even a PvP system
