Project Wasp
Still working on my game idea.
But the deeper I've been diving into what work and skills it would take to make a 3D tactical RPG, the more I am thinking that this might be something that is outside my current means and not a realistic goal for a first attempt at making a game. A tile-based 2D tactical RPG I might be able to do, but acquiring the skills to draw sprites I'd be happy with seems like a major hurdle to take, and not one I'm looking forward to. A real-time with pause system in a 3D engine I also might be able to handle, but while I think that would be somewhat acceptable for my Sword & Sorcery setting Kaendor, it just wouldn't do for the kind of gunfights I want to see in my Space Opera setting Iridium Moons. And being able to reuse the same game code for an Iridium Moons game after completing a Kaendor game was the whole reason behind Project Hornet. So for the time being, I'm putting my concept work for Project Hornet into the desk drawer, to maybe see getting picked up again at some point in the future. (Though I want to keep this game development thing purely as a hobby and I can see work on just a single game taking ten years or more, so I'm not planning that far ahead yet.)
Instead, I want to pursue that other game idea that I've had in my head for nearly as long as the tactical RPG idea, which for my own organization of notes I now call Project Wasp.
The Pitch
I talked about my initial idea of the Stealth Archer Metroidvania all the way back in March. But I now have a lot more much more specific ideas for gameplay and a more clear overall concept. Reduced to a one sentence pitch, Project Wasp can be described as a hybrid of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Thief: The Dark Project, and Fallout. Part RPG, part ImSim, with some influences from Metroidvanias and Survival Games.
The targeted scope of the game is comparable to Fallout. The game world consists of a dozen or so separate outdoor maps, that can be traveled between on a travel screen, as also seen in Wasteland 2, and in a more rudimentary form in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. I feel that Fallout is a good target to aim for in both the amount of content and the scope of game mechanics.
The visual presentation of the game is more oriented on Morrowind, though. Fully 3D in first person, though perhaps with more of a late 90s rather than an early 2000s look to the graphics. (Graphics developed crazy fast in those days.) I've really fallen in love with the idea of a game that uses architecture and color schemes like Morrowind, at a level of fidelity and detail similar to Quake, but with the nicest looking dynamic lighting engine that Godot can provide to work on a modern potato. Fortune's Run does a similar thing but Doom graphics, and I think it looks totally awesome. Morrowind, alongside Kenshi, is also one of the big inspirations for the character ability system and character advancement. Project Wasp will be using a purely skill-based character and advancement system that doesn't use classes, levels, or experience points. All abilities that player's have access to are skills that have a success chance based on the relevant skill rank and attribute score. Any time a skill is used, there is a chance that the skill rank goes up. It will go up quickly when the skill rank is low, and improve at an increasingly lower speed as the rank goes up. Attributes increase the same way, though at a much slower pace. Unlike Morrowind, the game will probably have no spellcasting or enchanting, and most likely only potion brewing as the only crafting mechanic.
Dungeon exploration is where the influences of Thief come in. My intention is to make a game in which you can fight to save yourself and get your way in some situations, but in which you never become a superhero who can take armies of enemies and swarms of monsters. This is an aspect in which Project Wasp significantly diverges from Morrowind and the other Elder Scrolls games. The main character of the game is an explorer and mystic researcher first, not a mighty warrior. More like an Indiana Jones type character who might have the capability to fight his way out of dangerous situations, but can't do a frontal assault on an enemy stronghold. Finding hidden paths and secrets and figuring out how to overcome environmental obstacles is the intended core gameplay in dungeons and the wilderness.
World and Story
Project Wasp is set in Kaendor, a Sword & Sorcery fantasy world that I've been using for a number of different pen and paper RPG campaigns over the last 10 years or so. It's always been more of a consistent style and collection of recurring elements for the campaigns than a specific worked out world. A pool of worldbuilding ideas from which I've pulled as needed, but without a large scale map or coherent history. With Project Wasp, I want to continue using many of these ideas that I had flying around in my head for years, and many of which I never got an opportunity to use yet.
Kaendor is a forest planet, covered in woodlands and oceans, broken up by large mountain ranges and swamps. It is quite Earth-like in many ways, but more resembling the Paleozoic, dominated by large reptiles and huge insects, with only a few rodent- or deer-like primitive mammals. The people of Kaendor are very human-like as well in most respects, but don't really resemble the native populations of any regions on Earth. This aspect is greatly inspired by again Morrowind, but also the D&D setting Dark Sun, and also the John Carter of Mars novels.
The world is only sparsely populated, with the cultures and societies of its peoples being loosely inspired by various Iron Age civilizations. There are several city states and small kingdoms along the coast of the sea and the banks of major rivers, but mostly the world is unsettled and unexplored. However, it is an ancient world and there have been a number of much older pre-human civilizations such as serpentmen and giants, whose overgrown and buried ruins are scattered throughout the wildes.
The current idea for a framing story is set in a large river valley that has recently begun to get settled by clans of the woodland people, with trade outposts set up on the coast by the sea merchants. Some findings near the new settlements have given vague clues towards the existence of a Mystic Mountain somewhere much deeper in the wilderness, and numerous sages, mystics, sorcerers, and priests have come to the region hoping to learn more about its nature and what secrets it may hold. However, none of these people have much ability or experience when it comes to travel through the wilderness for weeks, climb around in the depths of dark caves, or deal with the many dangers of crumbling ancient ruins. They are all in need of the services of people capable to survive all these challenges, and who also have the ability to know what they are looking for and make sense of what they might find. Some of these people are going to be the players.
The intended long-term gameplay loop is to follow clues provided by sages to find hidden ruins in the wilderness, find and collect ancient texts and relics, and return back to civilization to share those findings with the sages. Using their greater knowledge of the Ancients and the arcane, which increases as the players bring them new discoveries to study, the sages can provide additional information of what seems to be going on in the region, as well as clues where the players could look to make even bigger discoveries on their next adventure. However, each of these sages have their own goals and motives, which often are in conflict with each other, and they might not fully trust the players with everything they actually know. What information they will share about the findings shown to them will be colored by their own hopes and ideological biases, or to outright manipulate the players to further their hidden goals. Alongside making sense of the environmental storytelling clues found in the dungeons, choosing what findings to share with which sages, and how much to trust what they are saying, will be a major part in piecing together the actual history of the region, and eventually make it to the Mystic Mountain and whatever mystical secrets might be found within.
Various Ideas
I want to design outdoor areas in a way that allows for different texture sets to be loaded depending on the in-game time. This way the game can have seasonal changes, showing the passage of several years. (Overland travel and medical treatments can take weeks.)
NPCs will use a faction reputation system so they will become more aggressive if you attack or kill faction members, steal faction property, or side with their enemies in certain quests. Positive reputation will make NPCs come to your aid when they see you getting attacked and make them more agreeable to accompany you on an adventure. Doing your crimes against a faction stealthily greatly reduces the negative reputation impact. (Over time they will have growing suspicions that you're connected with the mysterious deaths and break-ins.)
Weather and other environmental sounds impact the ability of NPCs to hear you sneaking around.
Caves and dungeons are pitch black and have no ambient light. All lights are point sources, and there are no random torches burning in areas that are unoccupied.
Faint magic light stones can be dropped, thrown and picked up, and used as an emergency light source when readied in the hand. But they suck compared to torches and lamps and are there to make it possibly to get out of a dungeon when you run out of other lights.
NPCs can see your light when you sneak in the dark. (I admit I have no idea how to make this a workable gameplay mechanic yet.)
Grappling hooks with climbable ropes.
Carry weight affects your overland travel speed between maps.
Armor provides very strong protection, but is heavy and severely impacts stealth. Not using any armor should be a perfectly viable play style, perhaps even default.
The character does not get hungry, but a ration is needed to get the full benefit of rest. When traveling overland, you can choose to eat rations instead of foraging for food to travel faster.
Instead of hit points, characters have stamina. As stamina decreases in combat, there is an increasing chance to suffer a critical injury that applies a permanent status effect, that also significantly affects combat stats. At 0 stamina, the next attack has a 100% chance to cause the most severe critical injury: Instant death. Stamina is recovered by resting or drinking potions, but critical injuries need medical treatment to remove.
Players can try to use their own healing skill to treat their critical injuries, but NPC healers will have much higher ranks in the healing skill than players are likely to ever reach. Critical injuries can only be treated in save places with a bad and require many days of rest to heal. Based on the healing skill rank, there is a chance for the injury and the status effect to be completely removed, or for the status effect to only get reduced in severity and becoming fully permanent. (The permanent debuffs should be balanced to not outweigh the skill rank increases from adventures in the long run.)
Using magic items consumes stamina.
The strength of magic items and magic monster abilities increases with ranks in the Sorcery skill. The resistance to magic items and magic monster abilities decreases with ranks in the Sorcery skill. Some magic creatures are more aggressive towards characters with higher Sorcery skill ranks.
No crafting system, but potion brewing. Only rare special ingredients need to be collected. No point in picking common flowers.
Comments