What would you like to see in a Suikoden fan game?

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thcrock
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What would you like to see in a Suikoden fan game?

Post by thcrock »

Hey all!

Recently I've been thinking about how disappointing it is that Konami has given up on Suikoden. Star Wars actually reminded me of this; I just got around to seeing the latest installment last week (I have a two year old so it takes me a lot of time to get out of the house and do stuff), and what struck me is how fearless Star Wars is about fleshing out their universe in different media, despite the possibility that not every fan will love each story. Suikoden used to do that, but then got very scared.

The other thing that happened is my cousin created a tiny top down game engine from scratch. I was looking at the example gifs on the code repository and I got nostalgic for Suikoden.

I'm combining these in my mind and trying to come up with a sketch for a Suikoden fan game that doesn't require an amount of work that would make the project fizzle out. Strip it down to its bones. What takes a ton of time in game development that isn't totally necessary?

There have been attempts to make Suikoden game engines in the past, but it doesn't seem like any have gotten very far. I'm guessing this might be that they buckled under the weight of too many features for a fan work.

First thing: short story. I love recruiting 108 characters. I really do. But this is probably out for a fan game. Asset creation is a huge time sink in game development. Tell a short story. I'm hoping this point is non-controversial.

Second thing: gameplay extensibility. My favorite Suikoden games have a ton of gameplay systems! Six person battles, runes, weapon upgrades, items, leveling up. I love all of that. But does a short story fan game need it? I don't think it's necessary.

Third thing: battling. Obviously the minimal gameplay engine is no engine: we could just write fanfiction. But I still like to play something. The hybrid world map/town map/battle screen system in Suikoden is nice but...is it necessary? Could we get away with one screen type? Like a top down action adventure, no party, no world map? Like just imagine the town map, but you fight on that map. Or maybe there's no fighting! Or a tactics game! I love tactics games. And it's a great excuse to only have one screen type.

To me, what would make a Suikoden fan game worth making/playing is mostly that it's an attempt at telling a story told in the Suikoden universe, and that it's a game I can play. Everything else is negotiable.

What about you?
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sticky-runes
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Re: What would you like to see in a Suikoden fan game?

Post by sticky-runes »

It sounds like you want to create an Arc The Lad type game. That game only had one type of screen and didn't use different sprites for characters when they were in and out of battles.

If you want to make a game wthout leveling up and upgrading, then maybe do a section of one of the games from a villain's perspective? Suikoden 3 had a chapter where you play from the bad guys' POV and it was boring because Luc and his friends are already stupidly powerful so they don't need to go shopping or rest, you just walk forward and wipe out any enemies you encoutner with minimal effort. So if you want to focus on story with minimal gameplay effort, this could be the ideal scenrio for you. Maybe a short story about Windy teaming up with Yuber and Neclord as they search for the soul eater and it ends when they reach the Village of the Hidden Rune. Or a training mission for Jowy where he ditches his staff and practices with his sword against soldiers in a Highland camp. Finish it where he receives his mission to go to Greenhill.
thcrock
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Re: What would you like to see in a Suikoden fan game?

Post by thcrock »

Thanks for the reply! I hadn't played Arc the Lad before, but based on your post I looked up a playthrough of the first game. That seems like a good way to minimize complexity. I was worried about how a tactical rpg would be too hard to balance, but having just one character to control seems like a good way.

At the same time, I'm thinking of no battles at all as a decent option too.
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sticky-runes
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Re: What would you like to see in a Suikoden fan game?

Post by sticky-runes »

so just walking around talking to people. Would you be able to create a lot of dialogue options? Maybe you could come up with a branching narrative.

Maybe something like the event in Suikoden 2 when you choose not to take part in the battle for Greenhill, and you just stay behind in the war room with Apple, waiting for messengers to show up and give them orders. This was actually a really welcome part of the game, as a lot of the major battles in Suikoden 2 were crap, and it was more interesting to stand in the war room chatting with Apple, and the outcomes of battle were left to the imagination.
thcrock
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Re: What would you like to see in a Suikoden fan game?

Post by thcrock »

What actually came to mind as a Suikoden reference was the Greenhill ghost chasing mystery. Longer than that, of course, but that kind of thing.

I'm not totally sure if no combat would mean more puzzles, branching narrative, both, or something else. Branching narrative can be hard, I'm sure. But maybe a short story makes it easier because the branches don't have to last for a full length game. I actually do have something of an outline for a story going that would have me leaning towards a no combat game. I don't want to post it openly here in case some people would like to contribute to this thread without getting spoiled about the eventual result. If you are interested in seeing the story outline, I could do something like put them up on a public GitHub repo and link it from here.
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Re: What would you like to see in a Suikoden fan game?

Post by Antimatzist »

You could make many stories around Suikoden take are not directly related to the games. After Suikoden V, Oboro goes on a mission to Nagarea. I always envisioned it as being a MGS stealth mission, which would be interesting to see in a 2D top-down view?, but yeah, things like that.

If you want a game where you just walk around, a Visual Novel would probably be the best type of game for that.
thcrock
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Re: What would you like to see in a Suikoden fan game?

Post by thcrock »

Well if anybody is interested I am collecting my (disjointed) thoughts about the game here. I have a concept that I think would be fun to make. It's mostly brainstorming, not a fully thought out outline yet. I'll organize it more soon.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wed0d6ra5pfno ... e.txt?dl=0

Edit: I did start working on the script

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b9kgit9235uil ... t.txt?dl=0
Rein
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Re: What would you like to see in a Suikoden fan game?

Post by Rein »

One day, the star boulevard in hollywood becomes blank. No more names except one, the Tenkai. Little by little, the names fill up and with the 108th star, hollywood loses its hypnotic power over people.
thcrock
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Re: What would you like to see in a Suikoden fan game?

Post by thcrock »

I'm using the suikodenRM engine (see other thread in this forum) for right now. No combat. I'm not going to post regular development updates in this thread, but when I do get a code repo going I will post it so people can follow along if they'd like.
thcrock
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Re: What would you like to see in a Suikoden fan game?

Post by thcrock »

I reached my first development milestone, so here is a video update:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SMJNtKwEdY

You can follow along with my development at https://github.com/thcrock/SuikodenRM
Toremneon
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Re: What would you like to see in a Suikoden fan game?

Post by Toremneon »

Hi there, since I am working on a fangame myself, I can tell you that there is already a lot of engine to copy suikoden, form smithing, Runes to level up systems.

Also I saw very many Fan games over time, people start very excited but in hugh amounts of time and then see, that the work is just crushingly much for 1 person. We started our fan game with the same premises, small frame, no 108 stars, little addon story line to the main series. So we decided to go with A Prelude to Suikoden 2 and focus on Viktor and Flik and how they got from Toran to Dunan. But even this was a way to big and we failed many times and gave up on it. By time, I managed to find more and more people who work on Suikoden games, I learned more and still, I would not even get close to where my project is now, if not for other peoples help, engines and guidance.

We also currently try to set up a discord channel for Suikoden game making to get more projects together and coordinate and work with each other.

I will post a link for it here soon.

But I guess what we really need is to work together and not everyone on his own corner.
thcrock
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Re: What would you like to see in a Suikoden fan game?

Post by thcrock »

What you said is precisely why I opted to build mine with no battle system. I wanted to be radical about reducing scope because recruiting and collaborating with a team of unpaid strangers on the internet is almost as hard as going it yourself.

The Suikoden engine posted on this forum that I used got me about halfway, feature wise, to where I wanted to go. I've since added some more stuff, and this next development milestone (scripting scenes) will basically complete the engine.

I would be interested in a Suikoden game maker discord. I joined and posted my game details in a couple of Suikoden discords and have already had good feedback from them but it would be nice to connect with more.
Toremneon
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Re: What would you like to see in a Suikoden fan game?

Post by Toremneon »

I made a discord channel that should help coordiante fan games:

https://discord.gg/YDeMXv

Should I make a own thread for that channel?
thcrock
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Re: What would you like to see in a Suikoden fan game?

Post by thcrock »

Yeah it could use its own thread
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