Seeds of Chaos [Ren'py - Version 0.2.42]
- Thread starter Lord Arioch
- Start date
All on the way in the next few months. Things are starting to move along a bit faster now though, so I'll have more to share as the demo is being put together.
Yup, the game will have an event gallery / scene replay / theatre mode that allows you to replay all the sex scenes you have encountered.
I've got a team working on it (it'd take far too long for one person to do everything), but they are all staying in their own lanes, so to speak. One is just doing sprites, one is doing the backgrounds, another is doing character design, and so on. For the event CGs (sex scenes), I'll probably do something like Gabe does in the Opala games and have a bunch of different artists for variety's sake.
Apologies for the lack of updates, things have been understandably quiet over the holiday season. The good news is that I've found someone really great to do the (non-sex) game CGs, and I just got the first one back I can share with you.
Well, planned to have something out by now, but swapping from JS text to visual has slowed things down a bit because assets take money/time. Hoping to have the first half of the prologue out in the next few months though.
Here's a new CG which I think serves pretty well as a "Coming Soon" sort of image.
View attachment 2581
So cool
Here's a little more concept art, and when I have time (hopefully later today) I'll write a little 'state of the game' post about where I'm up to and how the game has changed since the initial post.
I have got to say, I feel the hype of a new AAA game release. The artwork is amazing.
Okay, so this is the first of three aforementioned posts about the state of the game (skip to the bullet point lists below for the juicy stuff if you aren't interested in reading about how design choices came about).
About four months ago, I was ready to give up. I was into my third week of trying to code some sort of combat system, and trying to code something balanced that wasn't boring as hell was driving me crazy. The worst thing is, I wasn't even interested in combat, I just felt like it was something I needed to have. I was one of those kids who used to skip the fights and just pretend that I had won when I played Fighting Fantasy books.
So I went back to the drawing board, I asked myself what the most important thing to me was. That was and still is "choice". I toyed with the idea of doing a visual novel, but I didn't want to tell a relatively linear story, I wanted to make a game where I set the scene to place players inside the world I built, and then let them have their own adventure. Fortuitously, I had been spending a bit of time playing some board games with friends, and the recent trend of co-op games that replace a GM with card decks gave me some ideas on how to do this. This lead to the development of the Event System.
Obviously, this is still very much a work in progress, which is why I have been cautious about sharing the details up to this point. In an ideal world, I'd construct it, populate it with events, and then have a group playtest it for months to iron out the kinks, but without funding I don't have the luxury. It also means certains things have been jettisoned - transformations, for example, due to costs for alternative art (I don't have CoC2 & Carnal Souls money, and also with those two on the horizon, I don't feel this is a big loss), and as of now you have to play as a male (however, if the game is popular enough, this could be expanded).
Anyway, without much further ado, here are the design notes for the Event System. Some time over the next few days, I'll post the second part that goes into more detail about what the Castle, Adventure, and Town spheres entail. The final part describing the Nemesis Event will be up some time next week.
The Event System
- The Event System is the game mechanism that determines what happens to your character during the game. Think of it as being similar to a collection of linked decks, and each turn, the player chooses which deck they would like to draw the top card from, experiencing the event that is revealed. As the game progresses, player choices, event effects, and other factors will determine which cards are added or even subtracted from the decks, shaping the game.
- There are three main spheres of event; Castle, Adventure, and Town.
- There are four main types of event within these spheres; Benediction, Malediction, Challenge, and Judgement. Benediction events are events that have a beneficial effect, while Malediction events are detrimental. Challenge events evaluate game factors in order to determine the outcome, and can be either beneficial or detrimental. Finally, Judgement events require the player to make decisions and resolve by applying the consequences of the player’s choices.
- All events have a tier, and these tiers range from one (I), the lowest, to five (V), the highest. The tier dictates the power of the event, for example a tier V Benediction may give you a very powerful item, while a tier V Challenge would have a high chance of failure. When the game begins, the event pools are made up of mostly low tier events, but as the game progresses, the higher tier events begin to sneak their way in. If the player hasn’t prepared well in the early stages of the game, they may start to become overwhelmed.
- Events can also have subtypes, such as equipment, curse, trap, et cetera.
- There is also a special category of event that exists outside these spheres; The Nemesis Event.
Advantages
- The randomized nature of the Event System, combined with the fact that event pools will be modified by player decisions and other factors, adds greatly to the re-playability value of the game. When the event pool is large enough, the limited number of player actions per play-through will make it impossible to see them all in one run.
- Allows regular releases of small updates in the form of new events.
- Allows the addition of content as text with placeholder when budgetary or time constrains regarding art would otherwise halt development.
- Tagging events allows for easy filtering of event pools, meaning a player would be able to filter out all of the kinks they are not interested in, or even all of the sex entirely. It will also allow the manipulation of difficulty if the player is struggling, or they want more of a challenge.
- Allows for constant, micro-scale re-balancing in regards to player feedback with the addition, deduction, or modification of unbalanced events.
- Can facilitate the later development of optional expansions that can be toggled on to add a linked collection of new events, or even new spheres/pools/types.
- Allows player input in regards to content (as one time, non-story related events) without compromising canon.
About four months ago, I was ready to give up. I was into my third week of trying to code some sort of combat system, and trying to code something balanced that wasn't boring as hell was driving me crazy. The worst thing is, I wasn't even interested in combat, I just felt like it was something I needed to have. I was one of those kids who used to skip the fights and just pretend that I had won when I played Fighting Fantasy books.
So I went back to the drawing board, I asked myself what the most important thing to me was. That was and still is "choice". I toyed with the idea of doing a visual novel, but I didn't want to tell a relatively linear story, I wanted to make a game where I set the scene to place players inside the world I built, and then let them have their own adventure. Fortuitously, I had been spending a bit of time playing some board games with friends, and the recent trend of co-op games that replace a GM with card decks gave me some ideas on how to do this. This lead to the development of the Event System.
Obviously, this is still very much a work in progress, which is why I have been cautious about sharing the details up to this point. In an ideal world, I'd construct it, populate it with events, and then have a group playtest it for months to iron out the kinks, but without funding I don't have the luxury. It also means certains things have been jettisoned - transformations, for example, due to costs for alternative art (I don't have CoC2 & Carnal Souls money, and also with those two on the horizon, I don't feel this is a big loss), and as of now you have to play as a male (however, if the game is popular enough, this could be expanded).
Anyway, without much further ado, here are the design notes for the Event System. Some time over the next few days, I'll post the second part that goes into more detail about what the Castle, Adventure, and Town spheres entail. The final part describing the Nemesis Event will be up some time next week.
The Event System
- The Event System is the game mechanism that determines what happens to your character during the game. Think of it as being similar to a collection of linked decks, and each turn, the player chooses which deck they would like to draw the top card from, experiencing the event that is revealed. As the game progresses, player choices, event effects, and other factors will determine which cards are added or even subtracted from the decks, shaping the game.
- There are three main spheres of event; Castle, Adventure, and Town.
- There are four main types of event within these spheres; Benediction, Malediction, Challenge, and Judgement. Benediction events are events that have a beneficial effect, while Malediction events are detrimental. Challenge events evaluate game factors in order to determine the outcome, and can be either beneficial or detrimental. Finally, Judgement events require the player to make decisions and resolve by applying the consequences of the player’s choices.
- All events have a tier, and these tiers range from one (I), the lowest, to five (V), the highest. The tier dictates the power of the event, for example a tier V Benediction may give you a very powerful item, while a tier V Challenge would have a high chance of failure. When the game begins, the event pools are made up of mostly low tier events, but as the game progresses, the higher tier events begin to sneak their way in. If the player hasn’t prepared well in the early stages of the game, they may start to become overwhelmed.
- Events can also have subtypes, such as equipment, curse, trap, et cetera.
- There is also a special category of event that exists outside these spheres; The Nemesis Event.
Advantages
- The randomized nature of the Event System, combined with the fact that event pools will be modified by player decisions and other factors, adds greatly to the re-playability value of the game. When the event pool is large enough, the limited number of player actions per play-through will make it impossible to see them all in one run.
- Allows regular releases of small updates in the form of new events.
- Allows the addition of content as text with placeholder when budgetary or time constrains regarding art would otherwise halt development.
- Tagging events allows for easy filtering of event pools, meaning a player would be able to filter out all of the kinks they are not interested in, or even all of the sex entirely. It will also allow the manipulation of difficulty if the player is struggling, or they want more of a challenge.
- Allows for constant, micro-scale re-balancing in regards to player feedback with the addition, deduction, or modification of unbalanced events.
- Can facilitate the later development of optional expansions that can be toggled on to add a linked collection of new events, or even new spheres/pools/types.
- Allows player input in regards to content (as one time, non-story related events) without compromising canon.
The event system sounds pretty awesome! If you really don't like classic fight systems and don't what to take any existing, just screw it ) Thank you for telling us about that and the way you came to it.
What game will it mostly look similar to?
How are the events created? Are they generated according to some templates? Or each single event is written by someone? How many of them are already made? How much randomness will be there? What if you start a game, and you get only bad events in a long sequence, that stops you from preparing to a higher level events? That's, basically, what I see in "No Haven" and other games by orcm (don't know his real name). No matter how much you know about the game and how well you play it, you always can start with a sequence of very bad events and have no chance to win.
"- Allows regular releases of small updates in the form of new events." - now, that's where you need to be careful )) Any extra card in a deck can easily change the balance. Actually, game balancing takes a lot of time. So, no way you can make it perfectly balanced before people test it. If it appears that many people use same card/event/choise succesefully againg and again in order to progress and beat all others, it means it's unbalanced and that event/choise is too strong. Also, a classic approach to build interesting game balance, is when you have several races/abilities/events which are not eaquly strong, but with 1st one you can beat 2nd easily, with the 2nd you can beat 3rd, with 3rd you can beat 1st. So, that makes people want to learn it and think what to choose next time, according to what problem they currently have in the game. But you already know it all, probably.
Thanks again for the great post. We all are here to try your creation! )
What game will it mostly look similar to?
How are the events created? Are they generated according to some templates? Or each single event is written by someone? How many of them are already made? How much randomness will be there? What if you start a game, and you get only bad events in a long sequence, that stops you from preparing to a higher level events? That's, basically, what I see in "No Haven" and other games by orcm (don't know his real name). No matter how much you know about the game and how well you play it, you always can start with a sequence of very bad events and have no chance to win.
"- Allows regular releases of small updates in the form of new events." - now, that's where you need to be careful )) Any extra card in a deck can easily change the balance. Actually, game balancing takes a lot of time. So, no way you can make it perfectly balanced before people test it. If it appears that many people use same card/event/choise succesefully againg and again in order to progress and beat all others, it means it's unbalanced and that event/choise is too strong. Also, a classic approach to build interesting game balance, is when you have several races/abilities/events which are not eaquly strong, but with 1st one you can beat 2nd easily, with the 2nd you can beat 3rd, with 3rd you can beat 1st. So, that makes people want to learn it and think what to choose next time, according to what problem they currently have in the game. But you already know it all, probably.
Thanks again for the great post. We all are here to try your creation! )