Ok so after abandoning a few fan projects because of a lack of artists to help develop the games, I've been trying to think of a fun fan game I could program that wouldn't require excessive amounts of artwork. Recently Blizzard announced a new online trading card game which looks pretty cool so I thought why not Suikoden? But after fumbling around with various unique setups I didn't really like the idea of copying or creating a new format for playing this kind of game. So I thought about the army battles in Suikoden 2 and thought maybe I could make the gameplay kind of like that. So here's the idea so far:
When you start the game you get a starter pack of cards. There are various kinds of cards: character, rune, armor, other stuff maybe? Character cards have support characters and unit leader characters probably. You take your deck of cards and create an army a la suikoden 2. Then you fight suikoden 2 army battles with the army you have created. Winning battles yields cards or some currency system that allows you to buy new cards, and maybe upgrade current cards.
So for example, let's say you have Tir, Gremio and Pahn cards. Tir would be a unit leader card so you could create a new army unit with him. Gremio and Pahn would be support cards and have descriptions of abilities that they provide to a unit and also give atk/def boosts to that unit, just like in suikoden 2. So additionally there would be bonuses for creating certain unite combinations, kind of like unites. In this case, the group of 3 we created are all connected so they would have an added unit bonus. Let's say you also have a Lightning rune card. You can give that to a character card with a lightning affinity and boost their atk or give them new special abilities. Cards like Tir would probably not start out with a soul eater attached, but rather if you get a soul eater card you can augment your Tir card, and maybe gain special combat abilities.
The parts of the game I need help with during this pre-development stage are the combat system and also the leveling system. Should cards gain experience for surviving combat and gain in strength? Should combat be the same number mechanics of s2 army battles (atk-def * 5% for a chance to damage unit?) or should unit damage be less by chance and more of a health pool that drops every time you're hit, type of system. Should you gain cards from your opponent for beating them in a battle or should you gain currency that allows you to buy more cards? Should you be able to spend currency to upgrade cards; should cards even be upgradable?
Please feel free to comment on any part of this idea that you would like. As with most (all?) fan projects on this forum, don't expect this to ever actually get made, but as someone with actually programming experience, if I feel like the community has helped me create a really fun idea for a game, there is a good chance I will get at least something publicly playable.
Need Help Developing New Fan Game Idea
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Punkaiser
- Posts: 644
- Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2012 5:21 am
Re: Need Help Developing New Fan Game Idea
Macros:
-Players initially start a game with 1 union (a card party of max 3 members), as the game goes on, players will be able to "get"(recruit) more characters card to form more unions (you decide max number of unions can be deployed in battle , and how you let players get new character cards depend on your choice, story? sidequests? random?
-I like battle mode to be executed as it is in Ogre battles, there's a field where we move the card unions around. When face an enemy(also a card union), engage mode will be trigged. In engage mode,battle may be automatically executed which mean the card characters perform actions according to what they were assigned to(to be explained later) or players still have control over the commands(it's your choice)
Micros:
-Each character card should have:
*Class: knight, mage, ninja...etc... that will determine their stats growth and skill set.
Each class has some stats requirements in order to change/advance to, some classes must be unlocked through quests.
*Stats & level: what I propose is to do something new, let the stats have their own level system instead of using characters overall level. Like each time a character does physical attack, he will gain exp for STR, likewise for magic->INT, being attacked physically->DEF, getting attacked by magic->MDEF. That's the basic, you can always decide if you want things more complicated by adding extra mechanics: accuracy, evasion,crit, multihit, chain magic.
Each time a stat level up, it adds a certain points for itself along with some HP according to characters class( Ex: when a knight get his STR level up, +5STR +5HP but for a mage, only +2STR +2HP)
===Advanced features to consider for cards===
*Position skill sets: Each union is composed of 3 positions for 1x attacker, 1x defender, 1x caster. And each character has 3 different skill sets reserved for each of those roles. Skill set is determined by class. Each skill levels up when its stats requirements are satisfied(a STR and/or b INT and/or c DEF).
Ex:
Tir is of duelist class, his skill set shows as below:
Attacker skills: duelist-attack1, duelist-attackk2, duelist-attack3
Defender skills: duelist-defend1, duelist-defend2, duelist-defend3
Caster skills : duelist-magic1, duelist-magic2, duelist-magic3
So if players put him in attacker position, during the battle he will only be able to use his duelist-attacks but not defender or caster skills. Put him in caster position, he will only use duelist-magics he has but not his attacker or defender skills.
How many actions a character could use per engage is up to you for balancing.
So an union with <Tir-attacker,Pahn-defender, Gremio-caster> will fight totally differently to <Pahn-attacker,Gremio-defender,Tir-caster> .
There should be a command/function which lets players switch around character positions(may be even members) after each engage(but not during engage mode) .
*Attributes: are set of categories a character belong to. It may consist of classes, races, genders, groups member, elements..etc..
Ex: Tir has these attributes: human, male, duelist, Teo's family, dark.
With the right attributes, a certain formation could be formed which give some bonuses to that union.
Ex:
Formation A require 3 members of Teo's family to be formed. Bonus: Teo's family attack could be used by this union(unite attack)
Formation B require 3 blademasters. Bonus: +20STR +20DEF
Or getting complicated with multiple conditions: Formation C require 3x orcs, 2x berserkers, 1x earth, 1 female (keep in mind an union can only has 3 members at max so players gotta sort out their characters in order to satisfy the conditions). Bonus: STR & INT +30, maxHP +10%, immune to instant death...
That's all I can think of right now.
-Players initially start a game with 1 union (a card party of max 3 members), as the game goes on, players will be able to "get"(recruit) more characters card to form more unions (you decide max number of unions can be deployed in battle , and how you let players get new character cards depend on your choice, story? sidequests? random?
-I like battle mode to be executed as it is in Ogre battles, there's a field where we move the card unions around. When face an enemy(also a card union), engage mode will be trigged. In engage mode,battle may be automatically executed which mean the card characters perform actions according to what they were assigned to(to be explained later) or players still have control over the commands(it's your choice)
Micros:
-Each character card should have:
*Class: knight, mage, ninja...etc... that will determine their stats growth and skill set.
Each class has some stats requirements in order to change/advance to, some classes must be unlocked through quests.
*Stats & level: what I propose is to do something new, let the stats have their own level system instead of using characters overall level. Like each time a character does physical attack, he will gain exp for STR, likewise for magic->INT, being attacked physically->DEF, getting attacked by magic->MDEF. That's the basic, you can always decide if you want things more complicated by adding extra mechanics: accuracy, evasion,crit, multihit, chain magic.
Each time a stat level up, it adds a certain points for itself along with some HP according to characters class( Ex: when a knight get his STR level up, +5STR +5HP but for a mage, only +2STR +2HP)
===Advanced features to consider for cards===
*Position skill sets: Each union is composed of 3 positions for 1x attacker, 1x defender, 1x caster. And each character has 3 different skill sets reserved for each of those roles. Skill set is determined by class. Each skill levels up when its stats requirements are satisfied(a STR and/or b INT and/or c DEF).
Ex:
Tir is of duelist class, his skill set shows as below:
Attacker skills: duelist-attack1, duelist-attackk2, duelist-attack3
Defender skills: duelist-defend1, duelist-defend2, duelist-defend3
Caster skills : duelist-magic1, duelist-magic2, duelist-magic3
So if players put him in attacker position, during the battle he will only be able to use his duelist-attacks but not defender or caster skills. Put him in caster position, he will only use duelist-magics he has but not his attacker or defender skills.
How many actions a character could use per engage is up to you for balancing.
So an union with <Tir-attacker,Pahn-defender, Gremio-caster> will fight totally differently to <Pahn-attacker,Gremio-defender,Tir-caster> .
There should be a command/function which lets players switch around character positions(may be even members) after each engage(but not during engage mode) .
*Attributes: are set of categories a character belong to. It may consist of classes, races, genders, groups member, elements..etc..
Ex: Tir has these attributes: human, male, duelist, Teo's family, dark.
With the right attributes, a certain formation could be formed which give some bonuses to that union.
Ex:
Formation A require 3 members of Teo's family to be formed. Bonus: Teo's family attack could be used by this union(unite attack)
Formation B require 3 blademasters. Bonus: +20STR +20DEF
Or getting complicated with multiple conditions: Formation C require 3x orcs, 2x berserkers, 1x earth, 1 female (keep in mind an union can only has 3 members at max so players gotta sort out their characters in order to satisfy the conditions). Bonus: STR & INT +30, maxHP +10%, immune to instant death...
That's all I can think of right now.
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Flufflez
- Posts: 96
- Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2011 3:44 am
Re: Need Help Developing New Fan Game Idea
The is not intended to have a single player mode (although I may at some point implement an AI for solo play). You will obtain new cards through playing games with other plays. Not entirely sure what the system will be yet.
Gameplay will be suikoden2 army battle. If I get to a point where I implement an AI though I should be able to apply it to the player as well (a la "let apple decide").
I like your idea of classes, and am strongly considering it.
I don't directly want cards to have levels, although there will be some sense of them gaining power over time. They will have some sort of combat stats, although it will likely be simple like atk and def.
unit compositions will be entirely up to the player and there will be no penalty for how you arrange your units, only bonuses for intelligent synergies that follow the obvious marker of unites from the actual games.
Thanks for your feedback. I'm still developing a lot of preliminary stuff so if anyone else has some insight feel free to interject. Nothing is set in stone, but I'm outlining my ideas so far at this website:
https://sites.google.com/site/suikocards/home-1
I haven't been able to work on this very much yet, but in two weeks I should be able to commit quite a bit of time to it. I'm currently concentrating on trying to design a card, but from there I'll iron out some specifics with card details as well as combat mechanics and gameplay, matchmaking, etc etc.
Gameplay will be suikoden2 army battle. If I get to a point where I implement an AI though I should be able to apply it to the player as well (a la "let apple decide").
I like your idea of classes, and am strongly considering it.
I don't directly want cards to have levels, although there will be some sense of them gaining power over time. They will have some sort of combat stats, although it will likely be simple like atk and def.
unit compositions will be entirely up to the player and there will be no penalty for how you arrange your units, only bonuses for intelligent synergies that follow the obvious marker of unites from the actual games.
Thanks for your feedback. I'm still developing a lot of preliminary stuff so if anyone else has some insight feel free to interject. Nothing is set in stone, but I'm outlining my ideas so far at this website:
https://sites.google.com/site/suikocards/home-1
I haven't been able to work on this very much yet, but in two weeks I should be able to commit quite a bit of time to it. I'm currently concentrating on trying to design a card, but from there I'll iron out some specifics with card details as well as combat mechanics and gameplay, matchmaking, etc etc.