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Trying to be innovative (First Fangame)


Bastionb56
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Alright here we go, so I am making a FE fangame using the Lex Talionis Engine (Beautiful thing btw, go check it out) and I thought I'd try out something interesting:

So you know endings right? And you know how many games (Including FE games) have good and bad endings? 

What would you say if we applied that to every single chapter in a fangame, where certain conditions would need to be met for a good ending of the chapter. 

So for example, you know chapter 6 of Sacred Stones? The one where you get better rewards at the end of the mission depending on how many people you save?

Imagine it something like that, obviously not every chapter should have something that forces you to do some ultra complicated task, sometimes it could just be something like recruiting that one enemy instead of killing him, y'know, simple stuff

The game would then track the number of Good/Bad endings the player has gotten so far, and I can imagine things changing in the game, like the dialogue being more negative as the cast is barely able to scrape by, or becoming more positive when they do well. But this could also have an effect on the gameplay, like getting a different personal weapon for the Mc depending on how many good/bad endings you got. And it would obviously affect the final ending as well, depending on how many chapters the game would have (My set goal for now is around 10-12 with a few small x chapters mixed in) there could be loads of final endings depending on what you did.

This obviously requires every single chapter to have like at least 2 different versions, even if it's only dialogue changes. But I think this is something I could manage, seeing as I haven't set myself a time limit or anything.

So far I have tried this out with very simple conditions like "Don't have unit x die" or "Kill unit x before turn 10" stuff like that, but I also tried one more complicated condition (Being, "keep a unit alive", "have that unit visit a village" and "have that unit attack the boss with a specific weapon that you get from the village" all in the same map) and it adds an interesting challenge to the mix, as you aren't strictly required to do all of that, unless you want the Good ending.

(This Next part isn't as important and if you're in a rush you can skip it, it just talks about some gameplay changes)

Spoiler

One thing that might be a little more controversial (which I honestly just forgot when I first posted this) is that I played around a bit, and made a few big changes to classes and how promotions work (and giving archers more bows with 2-3 range, The lion throne did it, and I liked it, so I took my own spin on it). I'll quickly explain how and why the new promotion system works: There are now just 4 promotion trees. (Not including the Mc and Enemy only classes) This means that for example, that Archer, Myrmidon, and Spear fighter all on the same promotion tree, but this isn’t actually as big of a change as you might think. Every promotion tree has 3 tiers, tier 0, 1 and 2, tier 0 are trainees and they have a lot of options on this game, as they are able to access the entire class tree that they are a part of, meaning that as soon as you promote them from their trainee class, they can change to around 3 to 4 classes (giving the player a lot of options) from there on it gets a bit more standard, as every tier 1 class just has 2 options for promotion, and many of them have some kind of overlap (e. g. A Myrmidon can promote to either a Swordmaster or an Assassin, while an Archer can also promote into an Assassin, but also into a Sniper) This essentially allows you as the player, to experience every class in the game, in just 4 units. But obviously not everyone is starting as a trainee, so the reworked promotion system might be less apparent than this post makes it seem, It'll be essentially normal promotion, just with a few more options for select units.

Here's a rough overview of how the story's gonna look (Spoiler free obviously), some details may change but generally this is how I envision it:

Spoiler

The story takes place on an island continent called Iria. Two nations, the kingdom of dawn: "Ilu" and the kingdom of shadow: "Uma" exist here. While it may appear peaceful, the relation between the kingdoms is crumbling. While neither of the two countries want to go to war, it seems inevatible at this point. Ilu, a land known for it's wide plains and clear waters, is enjoying a high quality of live, especially the nobles. In the meantime, Uma, with it's rocky mountains and confusing caves is running low on farmland and as a result, the only thing currently preventing a total crisis, is a trade deal between Ilu and Uma. Unfortunately, the only two things that Uma can offer on the market are it's high amount of natural resources like iron and bronze, and seeing as there is no need to make armor or weapons, the terms of the trade deal are almost entirely one-sided. With things approaching their breaking point, Uma gears up for war considering it's becoming cheaper to build an army to take Ilus natural resources, rather than trading for it. Ilu however notices this and also prepares an army, their objective being a fast surgical strike with a small army, to destroy the uman army, before it can even build itself up. However there is a problem, a few small groups of Bandits, Vigilantes and Mercenaries are located between the two borders of the countries, while not a threat on their own, if they where to join with either side, they would almost guarantee victory.

So we arrive at the present, with the nations at a stalemate, building up their armies in an attempt to gain the adventage over the other, how ever possible. This is where our Main character, Shirly comes in, living with her sister in a small Ilun house near the border between the countries she dreams of adventure and sure enough, adventure soon finds her.

I would absolutely love to put a link here where you could download my work so far and try it out for yourself, unfortunately I am not yet at the stage where I would want to share anything even remotely close to a demo or a beta, everything is still way to temporary and unfinished, but if this somehow get's popular, I'll do my best to get around the first 4 chapters into a state where I am happy with them, so you can try them out.

If you have read this far, then I have to thank you very much for taking the time to do so, I would appreciate if you could tell me what you think of the concept so far, should I make it the focus of the game, having everything revolve around it? or should I focus more on something else?

Oh by the way, The title for the game will be "Tales of Iluma". I'd but that somewhere in the title of the thread, but as long as this is still in the "Concepts" catagory, I think the current title fits better (I'll update it as soon as we progress past the point of "concept")

Edited by Bastionb56
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17 minutes ago, Bastionb56 said:

The game would then track the number of Good/Bad endings the player has gotten so far, and I can imagine things changing in the game, like the dialogue being more negative as the cast is barely able to scrape by, or becoming more positive when they do well. But this could also have an effect on the gameplay, like getting a different personal weapon for the Mc depending on how many good/bad endings you got. And it would obviously affect the final ending as well, depending on how many chapters the game would have (My set goal for now is around 10-12 with a few small x chapters mixed in) there could be loads of final endings depending on what you did.

This is a very good idea. Having it change from the classic good ending to a chaotic ending is a pretty good idea. If you can implement this properly, and other aspects of the game are good, I would definitely play it. I would love to see this in action, keep going on your project!

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2 minutes ago, Hello72207 said:

Having it change from the classic good ending to a chaotic ending is a pretty good idea. If you can implement this properly,

Right now my personal goal would be to have about 5 different final endings, along with character specific endings that also change depending on what the player did (This obviously would take weeks of not months to write, but I'm motivated ^^)

5 minutes ago, Hello72207 said:

and other aspects of the game are good

Considering this is the Lex Talionis Engine we are talking about, there is honestly a lot of ways I can make the game "good", as the engine allows for a lot of creativity, obviously I will need feedback from other people to see how the gameplay feels, I'm optimistic about gameplay though, I find that gba fire emblem is pretty hard to screw up

9 minutes ago, Hello72207 said:

I would definitely play it. I would love to see this in action, keep going on your project!

Trust me I will, considering that I have quite the freetime due to the current situations, I feel like I can get the whole thing into a presentable state in just a few months, if not weeks, until then I will be as active here as I can, keeping the whole thing updated as much as I can

And also thank you for the encouragement, it means a lot to me ^^

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3 minutes ago, Archanea said:

This is a very interesting project, I hope I see this to the end! 

I'm hoping that this project doesn't end up like most though, left behind. That happens a lot on this forum.

I see a lot of potential in this project though, best of luck!

Thank you for the kind words ^^

It would really pain me to abandon this project. I have already invested a lot of time into it and I don't plan on stoping anytime soon ^^

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2 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Keep it short, because this entire things screams "burn out".  Start with, say, five chapters.

Well, I can understand what you mean, so much dialouge to write etc.

I am trying to really make this great, and for the whole system to work, I will need some chapters

But I feel like setting the bar a bit lower might be a good idea, say I'll do it like this:

I create five to six chapters, fully finish them so that it would be "complete" (Because as far as I have planned, this basically ends the "first arc" of the story)

And then I can look if I wanna keep going from there, I really want my first project to be a good one ^^

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1 minute ago, Bastionb56 said:

Well, I can understand what you mean, so much dialouge to write etc.

I am trying to really make this great, and for the whole system to work, I will need some chapters

But I feel like setting the bar a bit lower might be a good idea, say I'll do it like this:

I create five to six chapters, fully finish them so that it would be "complete" (Because as far as I have planned, this basically ends the "first arc" of the story)

And then I can look if I wanna keep going from there, I really want my first project to be a good one ^^

Bingo!  The reason why you start small is that there's going to be a ton of things that aren't going to work right - like, "I triggered this event, and it's doing weird things to the other side of the map!"  Arcs is a good idea, since you can always end it somewhere cleanly.

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1 minute ago, eclipse said:

Bingo!  The reason why you start small is that there's going to be a ton of things that aren't going to work right - like, "I triggered this event, and it's doing weird things to the other side of the map!"  Arcs is a good idea, since you can always end it somewhere cleanly.

Ahaha, I know exactly what you mean!

Thankfully I have already been working with the engine for about 3 months now, so I am mostly good on not triggering weird stuff like that, but still, Thank you for your advice ^^

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Update: Work is going smoothly, I'm having a lot of fun ^^

Seeing that there are people excited for my project really fires me up, so thank you guys!

If I keep going at the pace I am, I would be able to Showcase/Release a sort demo version containing (1-2 Chapters +Prologue) sometime next month! (As long as nothing unfortunate happens that makes me unable to progress.) This would obviously still use some temporary stuff (mostly face sprites and combat animations), and the maps will probably still get massive overhauls in the future. But the Basic concept of having multiple endings to a chapter and having this affect dialogue and gameplay in the next chapter would be fully funcional and ready for you to try out.

So be on the lookout, I'll update the OP as soon as I am happy with what I can present.

I'll put a checklist here so you know roughly how far I am:

  • Prologue - 100%
  • Chapter 1 - 100%
  • Chapter 2 - 100%
  • Menus and Polish - 40% (We have a title now ^^)
  • Music - 0% (I wanna make my own music, but I'm gonna use some classic FE music as to not make you wait forever for the demo)
Edited by Bastionb56
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  • 3 months later...

Hey so you might have checked this post in the past months and wondered: "What happened? Did he give up on his project?" 

Well no, I just took a break to do some other stuff that I wanted to do. But I am now back to continue working ^^

I would love to have like an awesome thing here where I tell you that I have finally completed the demo build and give you a download to play it, unfortunately the checklist up there still stands and I really don't want to present something that is still essentially just a mod of "The Lion Throne".

That being said, in the story that I have in my head, there is an event in the past that gets referenced quite frequently throughout the game. So to get back into the whole fan game making thing, I'm currently making a separate little adventure that won't be in the final game. (This let's me get past my perfectionism on everything concerning the actual game, and let's me present something to you much sooner)

Edit: Just to clarify: Yes, you will be able to play this as soon as I am done making it

Edited by Bastionb56
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Hey everyone, I updated the OP with some info on the Setting and Story, so if you're interested, give it a read!

Furthermore we now have a name for the game, It's gonna be called: "Tales of Iluma"

Also I'm currently finishing up my little side project (Gameplay is in it's final stages, over half the dialogue is finished (with the rest being already planned) and for the purposes of speeding things up a bit you'll have some classic fire emblem music to accompany you). Also I learned a lot of things while on this little poject, which has actually made me do a lot of adjusting and clean up on the real game, so I'm happy about that.

I don't wanna promise a release date or anything (seeing as how that went last time) but I'm very otimistic you won't have to wait much longer.

Edit:

Y'know what, with me talking the entire time, I might as well show you some of the things I'm working on:

Spoiler

In this little adventure you'll have five Units (There might be a sixth, but I wouldn't wanna share anything on him)

Lsm - Swordsmaster Lsm.png.4728d1b8ae652bcf73bb743cbaf82b21.png
Your strongest unit by far, you may classifiy him as a "Jagen architype" but there is a reason you have him, considering you're going up against quite massive armies, you'll probably be happy to have him. If you have him.

Alice - Mage Alice.png.82266a5e9bfaac513d5239d0370db747.png
While she is classified as a mage, don't be fooled, Alice is not only your only magic user, but also your only healer. Keep her safe and she'll do the same for you. You should also be aware that Anima magic now deals bonus damage against certain targets. Alice only starts with Fire though, so you gotta see for yourself where you can find the rest.

Larcius - Brawler Larcius.png.826d7211724dc06c13a250a5eea4a30b.png
Larcius is a Brawler, a new class that uses swords and axes with average stats accross the board. Larcius in particular has great defense and resistance, so if you want to set up a choke point or block enemies paths, he is your guy.

Amaki - ArcherAmaki.png.da17ec4d5c7e4c07fd601a1aa9b616bc.png
Amaki is your ranged ace, specializing in picking of enemy ranged and flying units. In Tales of Iluma bows come in two varients, wooden bows (Which have an additional tile of range) and metall bows (Which only have 2 range, but pack more punch). Amaki starts with both so you can see for yourself.

Chris - MercenaryChris.png.94af248dcbc0a11023f8b21eeb493649.png
I'll go right ahead and say it, Chris is your weakest unit. Locked to swords with less than average stats, he's probably not even worth using for some, however he has insane potential, and can automatically promote upon reaching level 10 (Note: You have to reach another level up at level 10 for him to promote). While Chris may be a pain to get started, once he gets started, he's not gonna stop.

 

Edited by Bastionb56
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This sounds interesting, I'm looking forward to seeing how you've implemented your ideas into the demo once it's finished!

On 3/26/2020 at 6:32 PM, Bastionb56 said:

The game would then track the number of Good/Bad endings the player has gotten so far, and I can imagine things changing in the game, like the dialogue being more negative as the cast is barely able to scrape by, or becoming more positive when they do well. But this could also have an effect on the gameplay, like getting a different personal weapon for the Mc depending on how many good/bad endings you got. And it would obviously affect the final ending as well, depending on how many chapters the game would have (My set goal for now is around 10-12 with a few small x chapters mixed in) there could be loads of final endings depending on what you did.

This obviously requires every single chapter to have like at least 2 different versions, even if it's only dialogue changes. But I think this is something I could manage, seeing as I haven't set myself a time limit or anything.

This would also allow for some interesting ways to add more depth to the characters. For example, if the player kills a certain enemy unit, instead of the whole cast reacting negatively towards it, some characters could support the decision, things like that.

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