Fantasy themed Scorched Earth

[Mephs]

Hey all,

Following on from my recent thread about my game design "Orbs". I have another more simple idea that might also make a good second project. I think this idea would play nicely on my interest in the fantasy/RPG genre and would also not be too complex to make, whilst being somewhat original.

The idea is basically to make a Scorched Earth clone, but to replace the tanks, rockets and guns with a fantasy setting with inhabitants such as dragons, archers and mages.

Now I know that taking an idea and simply changing the setting doesn't make a new game, but having thought about it, the idea of a scorched earth clone in a fantasy setting opens up some interesting thoughts on adjusting the gameplay where the artillery game genre seems to have gone somewhat stale.

I have looked around for such a game for a long time, but have yet to come across one in my experience. However, if anyone knows of any such existing games, please let me know!

Firstly, as the game would be a portfolio piece, and the majority of advice I have encountered suggests that 3d games are best as portfolio pieces, I think I will go with 3d graphics on a 2D playing field, or a 3d playing field that automatically moves the camera such that the distance between the current target and the player becomes the 2d viewing plane. I personally think aiming in 3D Scorched Earth clones really suffers from the addition of the 3rd dimension.

Now, as the game is 3d, I somewhat dislike Scorched Earth clones that use a heightmap as they never feel like they deform correctly when hit by explosions as vertices are only displaced vertically and not horizontally. I think that the game would be best served by having levels composed of discrete blocks which are destroyed upon collision with projectiles. Essentially the blocks would act like giant pixels, and this may help to ive the game a nice stylized look. I could look into a volumetric method, but I think it's a bit over the top for a simple portfolio piece (I'm open to opinion though!).

I think I would make the main characters mages, though this is horribly cliche, so I might need a twist on the format here. We could have several different classes of mage with access to different spells, providing extra replay value. For starters we could have a druid, mage and a necromancer (off the top of my head).

The player receives a hand of 5 spells frmo their class deck (or perhaps allow players to customize decks too?) and each turn, one new spell is added to their hand. Excess spells are removed each turn. Players may sacrifice a single spell in order to access a basic fireball spell. Mana is gathered by destroying mana crystal which grow around the playing field. The basic fireball will be used like a normal weapon in Scorched Earth, by setting angle and power and taking the wind into account in order to aim the shot. The fireball will easily destroy mana crystals, capturing mana for your mage, but wont have much impact on the opponent mage who will be protected by magical shielding.

Once a player gathers mana, they may access their more powerful spells. The game becomes a balance between harvesting enough mana, whilst making sure you don't sacrifice an essential spell.

Spells will include such options as teleporting, healing, magical shields, fireballs, curses, area effect projectiles, shapeshift (into creatures such as a dragon!) and more. Spells will be able to manipulate factors such as the amount of cards received on a new turn, reduce the enemies mana, and so on, your usual CCG style mechanics.

When it is a player's turn, they may cast as many spells as they have mana available for, unlike the usual Scorched Earth mechanic of simply have a single shot each turn.

The game obviously has some scope for creature summoning too, but I worry that this may start to create a lot of work in the form of modelling characters, so I'm unsure about whether to follow that route or not. Given the nature of the game in the form of environmental destruction, we could also have the players build structures to provide various benefits too, such as shielding towers, research libraries and so on, but again, this may be beyond the current scope of the game idea as it stands.

Do you think this would work as a game? Do you have any suggestions for improvement?

I'd love to hear any feedback on the idea.

Many thanks,

Steve

[Pyabo]

The idea is basically to make a Scorched Earth clone, but to replace the tanks, rockets and guns with a fantasy setting with inhabitants such as dragons, archers and mages.


You know... it's not a half bad idea. Mostly because I can't think of a game like this already.

But if you really want some feedback about your design, you should probably hit up the GameDev.net design forum(s). This forum is really geared toward more abstract design issues, and not ideas about specific games.

[Mephs]

Thanks for the comments :)

I agree that the usual thread round here seems more geared towards individual mechanics, it's just that I'm trying to get a central concept together for my next project. Once decided it will be easier for me to discuss more abstract mechanics.

Perhaps it would help to regard my post as a sequence of questions about abstract game design elements.

There is the question of representation of deformable terrain, whether it is best represented in a volumetric 3D form, as a 2D mesh, or as a collection of "macro pixel" blocks. Whether or not a fantasy genre game combined with an artillery game would have a viable market niche. How do we best represent 2D gameplay in a 3D environment. Finally, does the idea as it stands constitute an improvement to the genre, or does it make it needlessly complex?

I think this perhaps sums up my post into a series of questions better suited to the forum!

Cheers,

Steve

[Kitoslav]

Well game like that exists in my head for quite some time :)


Don't give new spells after each turn or round. You can have spell tree. And if player wants stronger spell, he has to gather enough points for it.
Spells could also have limited range.

And I don't like the idea that weather can influence your spells. Magic is above nature. But without that influence it would be just too easy to hit your opponent. Anyway... you can have both. Your mage can have some kind of aura in which nature does not effect your spells and beyond it spells acts as they would in given weather conditions (wind would change trajectory of your fireball, rain could extinguish it, etc.)
Player can invest his points into expanding this aura (thus expanding spell range).

[Mephs]

The idea of a spell tree instead of spells dealt frm a "spell deck" is an interesting one, but I'm not sure if it would work better. With a spell deck, players get access to all available spells and must stratgically use the most appropriate spell available from their limited selection and given their mana resources. The mana resources give the spells a power curve so that nobody will be throwing around nuke spells early into the game.

With a spell tree where points must be earnt, assuming players earn points for hitting targets like mana crystals, or something similar, each shot the player takes they must decide whether to aim for an upgrade or to damage the opponent. There is very little strategy in that method, it's one or the other with no real choices in between the extremes.

With the spell deck, players may be able to use more than 1 spell on a given turn, but to do so they must have the mana, which given the card sacrifice mana harvesting mechanic means the players do not have to choose between offence and mana gathering, provided the player has more than 1 spell remaining, they can sacrifice a spell to harvest mana, then use the remaining mana to cast other spells. If the opponent is close to death and mana is high, they can forgo the card sacrifice in order to get another shot in the same turn. The player can never rely on having an uber spell because they either may not have it in their hand, or they may not have sufficient mana.

If we used a spell tree, players would simply look for the sweet spot in the points earnt/spell effectiveness curve. Most matches would then end up with players simply harvesting points to reach the sweet spot first. It would be a simple power race rather than anything involving real situationally adaptive strategy.

That said, I'm open minded, so if there are benefits to a spell tree that I'm missing, please feel free to suggest them!

Also, I actually like the idea of weather effecting spells and hadn't thought about rain extinguishing fireballs. It might be interesting to implement other such effects. Perhaps we could have clouds on a given level from which players can invoke a lightning strike.

Thanks for the thought provoking response :)

Cheers,

Steve

[Kitoslav]

Player can in his turn also use more than one spell from the spell tree. He can choose from all spells he earned. And stronger spells might not always be the best way to destroy an opponent. They may have bigger range and do more damage. But they also require more mana and sometimes there is not enough of it to cast one mighty spell.
Player1 could (before the end of his turn) cast defensive spell that bounce stronger spells (or one kind of spells - ice, fire,...). He could also cast defensive spell that transform strong spell into mana or health.
Sometimes the best offence is a good defence. And every defence can be destroyed with an appropriate combination of (weaker) spells.

[XIX]

have you played moonbase commander?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonbase_Commander

It has some flaws but it is still the most interesting artillery game of the last few years.

[Artinum]

I like the card selection idea.

One adjustment - band your spells into different power levels. Have light, medium and heavy spells (the effect and mana usage being more the heavier the spell). Then have, say, six spells chosen - three light, two medium and one heavy. The advantage of this is that you don't end up with a player with only feeble spells, or worse, with lots of high level spells and no time to gather the mana for them.

Another idea is to have each spell only available to ONE player. That is, when a spell is chosen from the "deck", it is taken out of the deck and cannot be chosen by another. This also prevents duplicate spell choices. Naturally this means an upper limit on the number of players!

You might want to adjust things a little though. Have your wizards randomly supplied with spells by the drawing method above, but have them able to spend mana in a mid-battle "shop" where they can buy new spells or more uses for existing ones.

Other ideas...

* The first round should be non-violent. It would be an opportunity for every wizard to seek a suitable location to attack/defend from and to activate any defensive spells they have, before the first wizard can take out everyone else before they can even raise a basic shield spell. Round 2 lets the sparks fly.

* Wizards should be able to move around. At worst this would be on foot, with potential injury for falling off cliffs and such. Spells would exist that allow faster movement, limited flight or even teleportation.

* As for the issue of aim, perhaps the problem is not weather but the skill of the wizard. That fireball will always land where it is aimed regardless of wind, but your aim could be off a little. Otherwise, ordinary weather won't affect magic spells but magical weather could. And don't be boring with magic winds but have a variety of weird and wonderful weather. Rain that randomises your power gauge! Deadly hailstones! Mana snow (collect it before your opponents)!

That'll do. I'm starting to get carried away.

[Mephs]

A mid-battle shop sounds interesting, but a little clunky and disruptive to the gameplay. I wonder about changing the idea slightly to something that provides a similar safety net, but in a manner that flows a little better. We could allow players to memorize a small subset of their class spells at the start of battle. Players always have access to this small subset of spells for the usual mana cost, but being a limited subset, the player will get greater benefit from mixing and matching memorized spells with the greater variety of dealt spells.

I don't think I'm too worried about the randomness of the spells. If a player gets too many high level spells and not enough mana, then perhaps they need to build a deck with more low level spells? I would simply have to make the default character decks as fairly balanced as possible, and if a player gets a bad hand, they simply need to look towards making their memorized spell list more efficient for the situation they have encountered. I think that dealing with a spot of bad luck in the range of spells dealt to you could be part and parcel of the game.

A non-violent first round sounds like a good idea, though I'd like to think of an explanation for the delay in action. Perhaps I could simply call it the deployment round and provide the player with enough starting mana and fixed initial spells to be able to have several attempts at harvesting mana. That said, I think the spell system as it stands would stop anyone from attacking immediately anyway because they wouldn't have the mana to do so, it adds the element of strategy of deciding whether to attack your opponent early, or prepare your defences. As long as both player are under the same initial conditions, it should be more or less fair.

I would like wizards to be able to move around, but being a simple portfolio project, I might wait to put this into version 2 of the game as it will mean having to implement skeletal animation, write an exporter and model/texture/animate the characters, I was thinking that for the time being, it might be easier to simply have characters teleport for the sake of trying to finish the project as quickly as possible. If I get time though I'll certainly look at adding proper movement.

Magical weather sounds really interesting and I think it would give the game a great sense of attention to detail. I'm not sure how many ideas I can come up with based around the idea of magical weatherm but it's definitely something for me to keep thinking on :)

I wonder about including some kind of mission scenarios too, simple rescue the princess, capture the flag, hold the fort type scenarios?

Anyhoo, many thanks for another great response :)

Cheers,

Steve

[jefferytitan]

I think that the defensive first round is best enforced by players starting with low mana. Defensive spells could be much mana-cheaper. Or perhaps they start with enough mana for either one attack OR one teleport. Could be strategic. I think they should only be able to teleport somewhere nearby or in line-of-sight to reduce chaos.

It might be good to have random events (e.g. comets) or cyclic events (e.g. phases of the moon) which affect different classes magical strength differently, e.g. necromancers prefer the dark etc.

The "deck" concept worries me. You don't want to look like a Yu-Gi-Oh clone. ;)

[Artinum]

It might be good to have random events (e.g. comets) or cyclic events (e.g. phases of the moon) which affect different classes magical strength differently, e.g. necromancers prefer the dark etc.


That's pretty much exactly what Archon did. Every move the colour of certain squares would cycle between black and white. The light side were strongest on white squares, the dark side strongest on black squares - so some strategy was involved in targeting strong enemies.

As for the deck of cards, I agree that this seems a little derivative! You can thus do one of two things - either use another device to randomly apportion spells, or copy Scorched Earth and give everyone a budget and a trip to the shop. You can buy one nuke for $10,000 or a smattering of smaller spells for the same price.

[NathanR]

I completed a strategy game about 4 months ago. Many people who play it say it feels like Scorched Earth quite a bit, only I set mine in a fantasy world with magic instead of weapons, etc. Just sent it off to the Registrar of Copyrights last week.

We used the pre-game store to purchase weapons (which we replaced with Magic Spells).

We used the cost device on the spells to prevent "win the game" combinations. We also made the game Realtime and threw out the turn based aspect entirely. In order to re-balance that little twist we gave the spells a cooldown timer, like World Of Warcraft. You cant cast the same thing over and over, and more powerful spells have a longer cooldown before you can use them again. For example the Hurl A Meteor power which costs a lot, has a huge cooldown, but is rather devastating and leaves a big scorched hole. So between the cooldown and cost limits we pretty much prevent players from picking the three powers that would win every time, and also built in replay by making them try new things and form new strategy. Thats what always got me to go back and play Scorch again.

[MrQ]

Sounds cool, I loved playing scorched earth with my brother when I was young.