SPID13 – roguelike with Moria maps that look like Moria

I will be posting SPIDs (Slashie’s Project Idea Drafts) in the blog, they will be short ideas for games or other projects I may or may not develop into full projects. Maybe they exist already, or someone will be inspired by them and save me the trouble of developing them.

A roguelike (or maybe an exploration RPG without procgen) with Moria-like maps featuring a lot of chasms; gigantic open sections of underground hollow with bridges connecting them in addition to the tunnels and room dug into the rock.

SPID12 – 35mm Photocamera Sim

I will be posting SPIDs (Slashie’s Project Idea Drafts) in the blog, they will be short ideas for games or other projects I may or may not develop into full projects. May be they exist already, or someone will be inspired by them and save me the trouble of developing them.

An app for iOS and Android which limits the number of pictures you can take with your smartphone in order to increase their individual value, by simulating a 35mm still-camera cassette.

rollo

In order to take pictures, the user has to create a new “cassette”, which will have a very limited capacity (24 by default). There is also a monthly cassette limit.

Features: User can select how far he wants to go, activating features individually

Cassette size: 12, 24 or 36 pictures
Development process: User cannot see the pictures once taken until the cassette is “developed”. Only finished cassettes can be developed and it can take either: 2 hours, 1 day or 1 week.
Monthly cassette limit: 4, 8 or 12 cassettes.

No, this app doesn’t include a picture filter to simulate the appearance of film photography.

SPID11 – Prince of Transylvania

I will be posting SPIDs (Slashie’s Project Idea Drafts) in the blog, they will be short ideas for games or other projects I may or may not develop into full projects. May be someone will be inspired by them and save me the trouble of developing them.

A crossover between Castlevania and Prince of Persia leaning heavily towards puzzle solving and with minimal combat. We have Nosferatu for SNES, while it may look similar it plays very differently!

The castle would feel dark and creepy, centuries long abandoned and full of traps and hidden places. Enemy encounters would be scarce, with each one of them being relevant to the puzzles or in some way unique.

The plot may remain simple, defeat Dracula as you would in any Castlevania game. Save the twists on “Dracula’s identity” for more dramatic games, in this one the environment would be the protagonist.

If you know about a game that would be similar to this, please put it on the comments 🙂

SPID10 – Zelda II Top down

I will be posting SPIDs (Slashie’s Project Idea Drafts) in the blog, they will be short ideas for games or other projects I may or may not develop into full projects. May be someone will be inspired by them and save me the trouble of developing them.

Remaking Zelda II: The adventures of Link as a top down action RPG using an engine similar to either Zelda I (may be using Zelda Classic) or Zelda III (may be using Zolarus).

z2remakemockup

Zelda 2 is a very different game compared to the rest of the series. There’s a change in the perspective which may partially be the reason to the shift from focusing on puzzle solving into being heavily combat oriented.

Hated by many just because of being different, it is actually a challenging and pretty enjoyable game. Still, it would be nice to have something more traditional fill the gap of classic top down adventuring set on this Hyrule.

SPID9 – Metal Gear: The Roguelike

I will be posting SPIDs (Slashie’s Project Idea Drafts) in the blog, they will be short ideas for games or other projects I may or may not develop into full projects. May be someone will be inspired by them and save me the trouble of developing them.

Back in 2008 I planned to do a Metal Gear themed roguelike for a game dev compo. Sadly I had no time for it.

mgrl-1

Infiltrate a base as a FOXHOUND special forces operative
Explore the randomly generated multi-building jungle base complex.
Stealthy rescue hostages and increase your rank
Avoid guards, they are bad
Find stealthy and not so stealthy weapons (Knifes, Handguns, Machineguns, Explosives and Rocketry)
Destroy mass-destruction nuclear-warhead-armed gigantic Metal Gear mechas
Meet new people and make friends with your transceiver.

Original thread at TigSource forums here

SPID 8 – Captain Tsubasa online

I will be posting SPIDs (Slashie’s Project Idea Drafts) in the blog, they will be short ideas for games or other projects I may or may not develop into full projects. May be someone will be inspired by them and save me the trouble of developing them.

Based on Captain Tsubasa II: Super Striker for the Famicom, create a game that keeps the spirit of the original including the 2D graphics and cinematics, while allowing online play and other game modes.

tsubasa3

Features

Playable in any browser and mobile
No history mode.
Select a team and play with your friends or…
Create your own persistent team, and participate in tournaments.
2D illustrations similar to the anime

tsubasa2

Some of the things to improve:

Usability, keeping the style of the interface but removing it’s rough parts (fan translations had to struggle with it to make it work)
No experience points / level up, players have fixed stats and it’s up to the player using their best abilities in the field.

tsubasa1

SPID 7 – Remaking Ultima V – Warriors of Destiny for NES

I will be posting SPIDs (Slashie’s Project Idea Drafts) in the blog, they will be short ideas for games or other projects I may or may not develop into full projects. May be someone will be inspired by them and save me the trouble of developing them.

The Ultima VI engine for DOS was pretty nice, it transitioned from a dual scale to a single integrated world where you could interact in a lot more of ways with the elements on it. It was so good that it was reused for the awesome Savage Empire and Martian Dreams games

However things didn’t work well when they tried to implement it on less powerful platforms. Ultima VI for C64, for example, tried to replicate the engine with not so good results.

u6c64

Then we have the FCI NES Ultima games; The ports for U3 and U4 were decent, mixing the graphic style and even the gameplay from contemporary jRPGs, they provided a good experience (specially the U4 one) by adapting the Ultima theme to the capabilities of the console. Then came U5, and for some reason they tried something different: Trying to replicate the Ultima 6 engine into the NES for it.

u5nes

The result was a game that was almost impossible to play and also severely reduced the plot of the original. The NES was just not able to handle something like this… it would take the power of the SNES to make a decent effort of replicating it (as we could see in the fairly good U6 SNES port).

So, what if we could fix this? fulfill the original vision of the game in a more powerful platform? Looking at the maps from the original game I see some potential for exploring Britannia and their dungeons in a way not many people has been able to, because of the issues of the game format. The idea would be to keep the same restrictions on graphics, but removing all the performance and user experience issues (and yes, fixing the damn music).

ultima_warriors_of_destiny_deceit

Would one alternative be using nuvie? As far as I know they focus on reading the data files from the original games, so I’m not sure if it’d be doable or practical to create an entire new game. So maybe the best bet would be starting from scratch and reverse engineer everything into it.

The Ultima Wiki lists some of the shortcomings of the port, I think all of these should be addressed:

Concern	Plan
Game is very slow	Make it run smoothly
No way to name the avatar or select gender	Enhance character creation
Difficult to discern what the various on-screen objects are	Enhance pixel art
There’s only one song thru the entire game.	Add more songs and also moments of silence.
There are no sound effects.	Add sound effects
Britannia had to be shrunked and deformed to fit everything in.	Should be kept, as part of the original design.
The number of NPCs was drastically reduced.	Add more NPCs
NPCs have much less to say.	Add more dialog to NPCs
The content and the story was altered significantly	Adjust content to the original game.
Controls are surprisingly complicated	Streamline controls.
Each command has a delay before execution.	Remove delay.
Party size reduced from six to four (and you can only have one extra)	Allow six party members
All swamps are represented by poison energy fields	Replace with swamps
Horseriding was eliminated	Add back horseriding.
Intro was vastly reduced.	Complete intro.
Ending sequence reduced and altered	Complete and adjust ending.

Three SPIDs: EXODUS Box, EXODUS Online and Britannia GPS game

SPID4 – EXODUS Box

EXODUS as a tabletop game, instead of fighting with LARP weapons, combat is decided with dice rolls.

As with EXODUS, players are divided between adventurers (who pick their starting class) and dungeon dwellers (who impersonate the dungeon monsters), and the program generates a random layout for them to explore. The party moves from room to room based on the available exits, and by moving they may trigger traps affecting their status.

When the program dictates combat happens and a monster party is formed, the “combat grid” is placed and players place their tokens in either the adventurers or the dungeon dwellers area. Then the starting player is randomly selected (from within all the players, dungeon dwellers included) and player take turns to act. Each player may perform any of the following actions:

Move 1 square in any direction
Attack another player using either melee or a special ability

Some monsters may move more than once.

Cast a spell or use a special ability (consuming Magic Points or Special Points)

I have tested it with some friends and it works fine! It may not be as fun as running around hitting your friends with a foam sword, but OTOH it gives allows for more tactical depth.

SPID5 – EXODUS Online

Each player has his own app on his phone, one of them starts a game and the others connect. As they explore the dungeon, the dungeon staff is given their monster role and the battles are tactical turn based.

SPID6 – Britannia GPS game

Each city a small representation of Britannia (a shard). Landmarks on the city are transformed into towns of virtue, shrines and dungeons.

The players must find the runes by going to each town and asking for them, then searching other places in the worlds based on the clues they got.

Parties of travelers could be formed to explore together and survive the random encounters. Characters would level up in a traditional way. Then the Avatar should go and meditate to the shrines.

Dungeons would require doing some fights better done in a party.

The ultimate goal is to get the stones of virtue and conquer the abyss to become the avatar.

SPID3 – Halls of the Clear Creek (DND1 Remake)

I will be posting SPIDs (Slashie’s Project Idea Drafts) in the blog, they will be short ideas for games or other projects I may or may not develop into full projects. May be someone will be inspired by them and save me the trouble of developing them.

Remake Richard Garriott’s DND1 as a classic Ultima game with an overhead tiled view, keeping as much as possible of the original game elements but making it a balanced and fun experience, while at the same time evolving it in a different way than Akalabeth and Ultima 1.

creekMockup

Two years ago, I participated in a contest to recreate the original game so that it could be played in modern computers (as well as introduced into Shroud of the Avatar) the results can be played here

The original DND1 used a teletype as the means of player interaction, it printed the events happening into the world in paper, and the player typed the commands to guide his character through the (deadly) dungeon.

After creating a character (from three possible classes Fighter, Cleric or Wizard) and rolling his stats, the player can buy equipment from the dungeon shop (available items are weapons, armor some utility items as well as food).

Then, once in the dungeon, the player had access to the following commands:

Move around: In each of the cardinal directions, after moving the player could fall into traps.
Open Door
Search for traps and secret doors
Switch weapon at hand: i.e. wielding a weapon from inventory
Fight: Used when an enemy was next to the player. Combatants would hit each other until missing (savage!)
Look around: Since the game didn’t show the surroundings after each action, this would make it print the surroundings as a coded matrix.
Save Game
Use Magic: Use one of the bought spells
Buy Magic: Get access to spells according to player class.
Pass
Buy HP: Exchange gold for HP.

All these command would be changed as following

Move around: Use directional keys instead, moving the player into the map.
Open door: Used automatically when moving into a door.
Search: ‘S’earch command, would show secret doors and traps.
Switch: ‘Z’tats command, allowing wielding weapons and wearing armor.
Fight: Moving into monsters or ‘F’iring ranged weapons in a direction.
Look Around: No longer needed since the viewport is updated after each action.
Save Game: Ctrl+’S’
Use Magic: ‘C’ast spell, then the number of the spell, based on the learned Spells
Buy Magic: Instead of a command this would be done by talking with the mage shopkeeper (an NPC)
Pass: Spacebar
Buy HP: Instead of a command this would be done by talking with a trainer (an NPC)

The objective of the game would be the same as in the original: Killing all monsters in a floor and then advancing into the next one (with tougher monsters). There are 8 floors.

A light plot, previous to Ultima 1 and Akalabeth, would be introduced into the game.

Floors would be generated with a layour similar to Ultima 4 SMS dungeons.

Some data from the original:

Weapons: SWORD, 2HSWORD, DAGGER, MACE, SPEAR, BOW, ARROWS
Armor: LEATHER, CHAIN, PLATE
Utility: ROPE, SPIKES, OIL, CROSS, FOOD
Enemies: BANDIT, GOBLIN, TROLL, SKELETON, BALRON, OCHRE JELLY, GREY OOZE, GNOME, KOBOLD, MUMMY
Cleric Spells: KILL, MISSILE 1, 2 and 3, CURE, FIND TRAPS, WITHSTAND, FIND DOOR
Wizard Spells: PUSH, KILL, FIND TRAP, TELEPORT, FIZZLE, MISSILE 1, 2 and 3, FIND DOOR, WALL

SPID2 – War of the Crystals

I will be posting SPIDs (Slashie’s Project Idea Drafts) in the blog, they will be short ideas for games or other projects I may or may not develop into full projects. May be someone will be inspired by them and save me the trouble of developing them.

A simple RTS in the world of Final Fantasy IV.

Players would choose a kingdom, which determines their starting settlements, units as well as access to special units. The map is randomly generated every time, similar to the FF4 Overworld. Players win by conquering all the castles.

Players starts with 2 workers and a soldier unit, as well as a castle and 2 towns or villages. Units are created in the towns, and consume gold which is obtained by mining caves. Villages create units slower than towns.

Towns and villages cannot be created but they can be conquered.