Character Discussion

[ruba1987]

@ProjectRPG/thinktank I need signoff on the races (https://github.com/ProjectRPG/ProjectRPG/wiki/Characters-%7BWIP%7D)

Let me know if your good with these and I will move forward with them in the game/class development

[dakdaros]

They sound good to me

[ruba1987]

@ProjectRPG/thinktank Ok, so I have assigned races to classes and cleaned up the classes. Let me know what you think.

Also, so they way this is going to work is they will select a race from the character select screen and then from there they will pick a top level class. This will either be Champion, Sorcerer, or Rapscallion. This will be their starting class. At some point within the game they can "Focus" and choose a more specific class. We also need to figure out what the ascended races are going to be and how those will work.

[dakdaros]

So, I think gameplay-wise, we have some really great ideas down for the depth of combat with a melee character, and a sorcerer character, with how the magic feels very skill based with attacks being affected by stuff like gravity and the like. But, I think one thing we should brainstorm is how to come up with a fun and interesting way that a Ranger class character would play. I like the archery a lot like Skyrim, it's fun as hell to be an archer in that game, but I feel like we should come up with more ideas on how to further separate an archer in our game from an archer in other games. That being said too, I like the idea of being able to pick up a weapon dropped by an enemy, and being able to use it for a short bit, and be able to throw it at any given time, like throwing a dagger or hurling a spear, which you could then pick up again, at least until it breaks. Kind of like in Dead Island, but maybe have that ability to throw things limited to a Ranger class, while a warrior class could dual wield with the dropped weapons for a bit, and the Sorcerer being able to levitate and shoot the dropped weapons, or a stronger version creates a maelstrom of weapons (think sword tornado), or even something about summoning spirits who take up the weapons. I'm going to create another issue about Using the Environment to discuss a lot of things like that. Walter and I think the idea of a very organic environment would really help.

[ruba1987]

These ideas regarding using the environment sound really neat. I really like these.

Regarding separating our ranger from other games, I would want to be careful with that. I don't want to be just like any game out there but many games have done a good job with it and it's nice to have a known good foundation for some of this stuff. As we get into actually designing the gameplay and doing playtests we can talk about changes to it and even before we start on it we can talk about the best approach to it but I think it's a bit early to lay down things like physics for the archer.

On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 4:23 PM, dakdaros notifications@github.com wrote:

So, I think gameplay-wise, we have some really great ideas down for the depth of combat with a melee character, and a sorcerer character, with how the magic feels very skill based with attacks being affected by stuff like gravity and the like. But, I think one thing we should brainstorm is how to come up with a fun and interesting way that a Ranger class character would play. I like the archery a lot like Skyrim, it's fun as hell to be an archer in that game, but I feel like we should come up with more ideas on how to further separate an archer in our game from an archer in other games. That being said too, I like the idea of being able to pick up a weapon dropped by an enemy, and being able to use it for a short bit, and be able to throw it at any given time, like throwing a dagger or hurling a spear, which you could then pick up again, at least until it breaks. Kind of like in Dead Island, but maybe have that ability to throw things limited to a Ranger class, while a warrior cla ss could dual wield with the dropped weapons for a bit, and the Sorcerer being able to levitate and shoot the dropped weapons, or a stronger version creates a maelstrom of weapons (think sword tornado), or even something about summoning spirits who take up the weapons. I'm going to create another issue about Using the Environment to discuss a lot of things like that. Walter and I think the idea of a very organic environment would really help.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/ProjectRPG/ProjectRPG/issues/9#issuecomment-42781986 .

[walterthearchitect]

@MuttStudio/themutts https://github.com/MuttStudio/ProjectRPG/wiki/Characters

Ive put what we talked about with the characters in so tommy can get going on some sick character sketches.

[ruba1987]

And let's use this as a discussion channel to On Nov 19, 2014 1:40 PM, "Walter Woods" notifications@github.com wrote:

@MuttStudio/themutts https://github.com/orgs/MuttStudio/teams/themutts https://github.com/MuttStudio/ProjectRPG/wiki/Characters

Ive put what we talked about with the characters in so tommy can get going on some sick character sketches.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/MuttStudio/ProjectRPG/issues/9#issuecomment-63690332.

[dakdaros]

I like a lot of these ideas, great baselines! And this sincerely helps to come up with sketches for everyone. In fleshing out ideas, how old would you think the daughter would be? are we talking infant who gets taken away to have experimented on, and have the mother run into an abomination that was once her daughter on the homeworld? Or, as I was more thinking, is the daughter maybe tweens or early teen years, and able to comprehend fully everything that is going on? So the reunion has much more impact?

[walterthearchitect]

Yea probably tween. I'm thinking maybe she was 13, and it has been a year at the start of the game, and she doesn't find her for several more years, after which she has changed and become something unexpected.I like that idea, like they transformed her in some way.

[dakdaros]

Yeah, though I'm almost thinking maybe at least 2 years from origin story to start of game. It would give the character some time to transform from housewife to badass.

[walterthearchitect]

Oh yea good call. The actual number would probably not be mentioned, but that sounds more realistic.

[dakdaros]

I already have a few ideas for the specifics of her origin story and how some of the cutscenes play out, to flesh out that character. I can give it a once over and post it to here later, or we could go over it on Friday during the meeting.

[walterthearchitect]

Regale me.

[dakdaros]

Backstory: The Warrior/Ranger was once a lady of a smaller castle in the countryside. Her entire life she has been groomed to live the life of a lady of nobility. Tender, supportive of her husband, the lord of the castle.

{Cutscene 1} A regular night in the castle, the Lady reading a book, looks up at her husband who is playing chess with his brother, who is a knight of the Castle, and smiling as her daughter is playing some childhood game. A knight bursts into the room. The men rush over to him. Hushed voices as they hurredly talk. The daughter runs to her mother and asks what is wrong. The Lord at last turns to his wife and child. "We are leaving. It is not safe for us here." They are led by several armed guards and hushed out of a back entrance to the Castle. The sounds of battle draw louder and louder. The group finds themselves entering another main room of the keep, which is where they are assaulted by several Venrok. In the struggle, the guards are killed, and the Lord is grabbed. as he is being run through, the Lady grabs a fallen guard's sword and runs at her husband's killer. She jams the sword into the fiend, dropping him lifeless to the floor. She hears her daughter scream as the girl is grabbed by the hair by a Venrok soldier. The Lady starts to run towards her daughter, but is stopped when a Venrok enters her path, slashes her about the face, and kicks her to the ground. As the screen starts to turn black, she sees her daughter being carried out by the Venrok. Everything goes dark. She hears some men scurrying about. "She's still alive! Don't worry my Lady, we will help you...." trails off to black. {end cutscene 1}

[walterthearchitect]

It would be a cool secret to have that she was nobility. A life she cast aside. And a cool reason for her to have some awesome facial scar.

[dakdaros]

{cutscene 2} Sometime has passed. The Lady sits in her room, her face covered in a thick veil to hide her scar. She hears the sound of clanging metal. Going to her window in the keep, she sees the Knights training their squires in the courtyard. Her gaze shifts to her husband's sword leaning against the wall. Cut to the courtyard, where the training is going on. The Lady suddenly appears, holding the sword. Everyone is stunned that she has left her room and is seen in public. "Teach me how to use this," she commands, holding up the blade. The head knight refuses, stating "But, m'Lady, women folk should no naught about swords and warfare, that is left for us men." She argues, ordering that she be trained. He refuses again. Eventually, arguing back and forth, she rips back the veil, exposing her disfigured face, and decrying that she watched her husband get murdered, and that her daughter is out there, and she needs to find her. Silence follows, and she turns to leave in disgust. On her way out, her brother in law comes from out of the shadows. "So you want to train? Find your daughter, get revenge for your husband, my brother?" "I have come to realize this is the life I was supposed to live." "Good, we start immediately." {end cutscene}

[dakdaros]

{cutscene 3} The Lady is training in battle against her brother in law. He is very aggressive against her. Eventually, in the sparring match, he slams against her hard and knocks her to the ground. She angrily protests until he shouts back "You think the Venrok will be this easy against you?! They will kill you!"

Scene cuts away, to where she overhears others discussing how she has lost her mind, and that it is unnatural that the Lady learns the ways of combat. There is talk of a successor family to her and her husband, as she is no longer fit to rule.

She leaves that night, though not without being stopped by her brother in law. He wishes her well, understanding there is nothing more that can be taught. The last view of this cutscene is her standing on a hill, looking back at her home for so long. {end cutscene}

[dakdaros]

Further cutscenes can be side stories of how she is constantly facing prejudice, i.e., her sitting in a tavern, when a knight tries to force his way into taking her bar stool from her, because there is no other spot. That obviously ends well for the man. Or other scenes that basically detail her transformation from a delicate damsel in distress type of a woman, into the hard ass that she is, but who is ultimately plagued by her pain, and how no man finds her attractive any longer. Not that it truly bothers her, however.

[dakdaros]

I want her to be a hard ass, a wanderer in this day and age. Her scar extends from the top of her head, where there is hair missing from where she was cut, and have it extend down, through an eye (maybe have that eye looking grotesquely damaged). But inside lies a pain and suffering. There is great sadness that resides within. And she never really wanted to live the life she leads, slaughtering Venrok and fighting chauvanism, but that is the life she must lead.

[dakdaros]

So we kind of need to figure out a name for her, her daughter, her husband.

And this is just one character, every main character needs to have a deep backstory like this. Something that gives the player something to identify with.

Anyway, thoughts?

[walterthearchitect]

Awesome! I like this. Perhaps she retains some small token of her ladyhood, not sure what. Maybe a delicate necklace.

I wonder how we would deal with these cutscenes. I still think it's out of our scope to create fully realized cutscenes, and honestly I'm not a huge fan of traditional cutscenes, but I wonder if we can do kind of what I had mentioned before with there being points in the rhythm of the level that essentially act as a set piece for these scenes.

So imagine she is walking through a cave system. To the side, there is a carved out portion of the cave, but inside is the scene. Her husband, his brother, and her daughter, as you described. And as you stand there, the scene plays out, in sharp contrast to the setting around it. You can still move around, but it would be written in such a way where no one needs to touch you specifically. You would still speak, but the characters would face you where you are. The end of the first scene would be essentially you screaming and the Venrok slashing at you and disappearing.

This would be a cool way to embed the memories with the world, because her story is about confronting her past, and she does this through discovering a connection with the earth and its power. In a sense, the earth is showing her and her party these memories as a way to help her find her daughter, because eventually these memories progress from past events she has seen, to the events previously hidden from her. This is what allows her to find her daughter's location.

We can go really crazy with these memory scenes. Whole rooms can even be essentially a projection of past or future events as a clue. It could even extend to other characters, and become some sort of silent aiding force that is helping them defeat the venrok. Perhaps to be later discovered.

[walterthearchitect]

This is the kind of thing that will really help us in the pacing of our missions. Having a slowed down break time of around 5 mins where you explore fragments of memories from your past would be a nice break.

[ruba1987]

You should fix the format of your title and Mark it wip On Nov 19, 2014 6:34 PM, "Walter Woods" notifications@github.com wrote:

This is the kind of thing that will really help us in the pacing of our missions. Having a slowed down break time of around 5 mins where you explore fragments of memories from your past would be a nice break.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/MuttStudio/ProjectRPG/issues/9#issuecomment-63735308.

[dakdaros]

I never responded to you ideas, wrapped up in class and work and the like. But, I really like what you suggested here with the cutscenes and how they play out. I think you're right, the non-traditional cutscenes are the way to go. I get annoyed sometimes if cutscenes suddenly take me out of the action, and force me to watch them. But, if we can do it to help the pacing a bit, and keep you (the player) involved, I think that it will help for a truly immersive experience.

[dakdaros]

I'm trying to work out some ideas to help me sketch the other characters and flesh them out more. I really like what you have here so far, @walterthearchitect. There is so much to go off of. Like the Robur character. I like the idea of suggesting his belief that he is the last of his kind, but even then is only a shadow of what he once was, having changed his body from a living, biological being to a largely robotic abomination. I was toying with the idea that he is largely a mute, his voice box was mutilated in his transformation. I'm drawing inspiration from the movie Wall-E here, where he could stammer out single word responses if he concentrates really hard. But his normal way of communicating is with emotion-filled (yeah, that sounds cheesy, but I'm not sure how else to describe it) mechanical groans. One race mission could have him spot the other Robur that's left, and trigger another cutscene that shows his planet being ripped apart by the Venrok. There's a lot of A to B to cover here, but I think the general idea is him reflecting on the destruction of his homeworld, and piecing together the other's betrayal. The betrayer at one point could try to coerce the Robur player into joining his side.

I'm not sure what we could do about finding an exciting new technology, but maybe it's something like the Robur gets his voice back, or something of that sort.

Unless we decide that doing the racial quests would grant a new skill/ability to all of the characters as incentive(which I like the idea of, but that's another discussion entirely).

[dakdaros]

An idea that comes to mind for the Opacis character is that he is an outcast from his own society. The Opacis society being an avidly religious and peaceful society that practice a peaceful form of magic. And that the coming of the Venrok to their world is just a sign that the gods are testing their faith. They made no attempts to fight the Venrok, as they do not believe in battle. But, there is a group of heretics in their society, that practice offensive magic. And maybe the Opacis character had started as a sort of peace-enforcer, sent to put down those heretics, only to discover when it is already too late that the Venrok are bleeding their homeworld dry, and that the Venrok must be stopped somehow. Yeah, there's a lot of drawing heavily on something like the force from Star Wars here. But, essentially, any Opacis characters that you meet on Earth are essentially outcasts and heretics who left their world, knowing that when that world died, it wasn't the coming of the great judgement day where all Opacis rise to their version of heaven, but rather the invasion and genocide of their people.

[walterthearchitect]

That's a SWEET idea, and ties in perfectly with the challenging of the monks' faith when it is discovered that the Opacis fathered their world. The Opacis' goal is to rid the humans of their faith and idealism, lest it be their undoing as it was on his world.

[walterthearchitect]

Man, that's pretty great.

[walterthearchitect]

And I like the idea that the Robur is a shadow of his former self, looking for a crucial piece to put him back together, but the issue here is I saw the Sicarus as a silent character, defined by actions. Maybe it wouldn't have to be silent, as you say, groans or other sounds... not sure.

[dakdaros]

Oh yeah, I guess I hadn't caught on about the Sicarius. Maybe the reason we don't hear much from the Sicarius, or see their face is because it was horrifically fucked up by the betrayer. I had the idea that you only see a small portion of that character's face at a given time, but maybe it's because the betrayer was confronted at their World's end, and for all intents and purposes, the player Sicarius was meant to be dead, but dragged themself through a portal at the last moment. The betrayer is just as surprised to see the player character alive as we are to see the betrayer alive. And at the start of the last confrontation, the player's character rips back the shroud to show a very fucked up face.

[dakdaros]

Or rips off their cloak, and their whole body is covered in gnarly looking scars.

[dakdaros]

Man, I just love character/world building, that's like my favorite thing, EVER!

[walterthearchitect]

SUPER fun

[walterthearchitect]

Had we decided the sicarus had a betrayer? It's just mysterious for now.

[walterthearchitect]

Or did you mean Robur?

[dakdaros]

I was just thinking things out loud. Nothing is for sure yet, but yeah, I don't think it should. We need to figure something else out. Because I'm thinking Robur has a betrayer, so why the hell would 2 different characters have similar stories.

[dakdaros]

Yeah, got the two mixed up a bit, that was my bad.

[walterthearchitect]

Yea i really like the idea of the sicarus being scarred all over. Could tie into the storyline of it acccidentally killing the slaves ad making amends against the slave master. Perhaps it was a slave itself.

[dakdaros]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. Being a slave itself, disobeying orders, and being horribly tortured. Or maybe the torture happened when the Sicarius character took part in an uprising on their world against the Venrok, and so the character was tortured for information. So their motivation is not to see the same thing happen to the humans.

[walterthearchitect]

Hmmm... yea i like it but i would want to play that one very close to the vest. Kind of imply it with glimpses of scars and its care for the slaves. At least at first, then find a cool way to confirm it.

[walterthearchitect]

Maybe at the slaver's execution, it speaks.

[dakdaros]

Yeah, I like that. I like the idea of some of the cutscenes being where the player is still walking around the world, but here's audio from a flashback. Like, the character screaming in agony, and a commanding voice shouting "Tell me where your comrades are!" and a quick flash of a scene on screen that shows something like a part of the character being branded with hot irons.

[walterthearchitect]

Yea audio only is an easy way to fill in the gaps.

[walterthearchitect]

For the Robur I kind of was thinking a bit about the Krogan from mass effect. But not so alien, just kind of the massiveness and mixture of biology and technology. Something to think about.

https://www.google.com/search?q=krogan&rlz=1C1GIGM_enUS554US554&espv=2&biw=1920&bih=955&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=OnNuVOumG8qtyAS6s4HwCg&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=QZElxAanARli6M%253A%3BDFRgePbf3LhHSM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fdailydesigninspiration.com%252Fdiverse%252F3d%252Fjasonmartin%252FKrogan-Grunt.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.dailydesigninspiration.com%252F3d%252Fjason-martin%252Fkrogan-grunt%252F%3B1600%3B914

[dakdaros]

So, I was playing Titanfall over this past weekend, and it got me to thinking about some character movement for our game. For the uninitiated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDitUij2g54

I'm just thinking aloud for how someone like the Sicarius would move, being a character that would rely on stealth and making quick strikes at enemies. I like the whole wall run aspect that transitions very smooth, and wondered if that's something that would be a possibility. While something like the human knight or the Robur would feel more like a heavy tank, the Sicarius could be very nimble. Maybe run into a room, jump and run along the wall, then do a diving dash, weapons out front, at a foe or group of foes.

Maybe the Robur, instead of a regular jump button, would have a sort of short dash/dodge that's on a cooldown, to dodge an incoming arrow or fireball. The knight could take their shield (I'm just imagining a tower shield), and slam it down in front of them to take cover.

Idk, like I said, this is all theoretical thinking, I was just playing Titanfall, and it got me thinking to how the different characters might move around, just to give added differences between how each class would feel.

Thoughts?