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| Thread: Madao's "Do you even creative develop" thread | |
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Madao
Tavern Dweller
desu
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posted August 28, 2016 02:08 AM |
bonus applied by kiryu133 on 28 Aug 2016. |
Edited by Madao at 14:02, 28 Aug 2016.
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Madao's
This one is what I've been working on lately, the tread meant to "guide" and advise any and future developers that want to wrestle with the creation of a Heroes of Might and Magic game. Comment, subscribe and all that jazz, here goes:
THE VISION OF THE GAME(creative developer pov tutorial)
Core of the game
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Most important thing is to decide and establish the ground rules that will represent a model of the game you are creating. These will serve as a base for the development process, but before you even get to the rules themselves, you would need to filter out which elements are the game's core.
"I am making Heroes of Might and Magic X/Y/Z":
Being that this title is a unique tbs and has a long history, you can familiarize enough with it to determine what elements are the core ones:
1)Explorable maps, in which
2)various factions compete for dominance by
3)having towns as bases of operation and recruiting
4)heroes, player avatars which interact and explore map carrying a
5)set of stackable combat units, and a
6)set of special support units, that help the heroes
7)battle to victory or defeat on
8)combat maps, all in their course of
9)learning skills and
10)spells, gaining
11)experience levels and
12)collecting resources to aid their faction's cause.
Back to the ground rules; you can now edit these 12 elements to define their functionality, and this is a step where basically everything is decided. It will heavily impact the final product, so much that you can reach critical failure.
In any case, the ideals on these 12 tags are different for everyone, so making a good decision will usually mean making the decision based on a working example from the past.
Since you're trying hard not to be a capitalist 'cause you want to make a good product besides earning money, and you know by heart that making a good product is what really makes you popular and not the swag, this will be your motto:
"I am making decision based on example from the past".
Make this your mantra because you are not creating a new game, but an installment to a game already made.
I'm going to try and set the decision goals on these 12 elements, based on my own research:
1)maps goal - requires having an experienced mapmaker to assist your game with:
-a working set of campaign and multiplayer maps
-a working, easy as possible to use map editor
-a working random map generator tool, ease of use also
2)faction goals - with two main categories, the design and the number, where design defines the concept(races or theme based) and the number sets the desired minimal number of factions to be had in the base version of the game, requires community research
3)town goals - requires concept artist that can deliver these:
-user interface model
-townscreen models for every faction, requires community research(2D or 3D)
4)hero goals - ultimate goal is to have heroes that specialize in might or magic, so those are two basic categories to start from. What's important is to decide on how to approach the concept:
a)some heroes are might, some are magic and these categories heavily impact the gameplaying experience(MMHO attempted this and failed)
-in this concept, the hero's category being might or magic one induces restrictions/benefits on skills, unit recruitment and stats, etc.; basically with this approach the game needs extra balancing, which in turn requires talent and time
b)all heroes are ambiguous and player decides how to build them on spot
-this one is easier than a) tbh, but more apropriate for when you don't actually have the talent or time(or money, don't forget that one) to do better
5)unit goals - Requires community research? Sure, but that's not the beginning nor the end. To begin you would have to have in mind that units reflect many things:
a)faction type
-this mainly concerns how you envisioned the factions, what are the weaknesses and what are the strengths, which special trait they have and what's supposed to be their story? Answer those and related questions and only then you can begin working on a unit concept
b)hero's influence
-with heroes special skills, the category(might hero/magic hero) and faction decided, you can proceed the work on unit concept, finish it and continue polishing and testing until you reach a decent enough balance
6)support units - the original concept hasn't changed much, 4 support units were in most editions, but lately that crude concept has seen innovations that sparked some serious contemplation, not only visual. If we list standard war machines by their role:
a)Catapult: weapon only used during town sieges
b)Ballista: used on the battlefield to deal extra damage
c)Healing tent: used to heal wounded units during battles
d)Ammo cart: provides infinite ammo to archers(+boosting archher's damage)
we can see how their usefulness is limited and very restricted, most of all they were same for every faction, which is kinda dull(H6 and 7 made a first break here, gj).The superior concept now has:
a)Siege weapon(my +1 goes to idea to add a secondary AoE attack with a faction flavor to it)
b)Warmachine(ballista to Haven, AoE cannon to Academy? Infernal flamethrower?)
c)Support unit(healing tent fits only the humans imo, to demons I would recommend a unit like, dunno, Sacrificial pit- kills one unit from the random stack (mastery influence: basic-creature tier 1 to 3, advanced: creature tier 3 to 5, expert: tier 5 to 7) every turn, or some Brazier that grants bonus fire dmg to unit stack? Or like a Bone pillar for necro, that decreases morale or gives bonus to necromancy?)
d)Ammo cart(well no point in touching it other than removing it completely I guess)
7)battle goals - it's a battle, get ready to lose units. Many people forget that/are spoiled with recent trending where you try not to lose ANY unit, which is really not the original point.
8)combat map,aka battlefield - one of the most discussed aspect of the game, the chesslike part of it and the part where players engage most. What's important about it is it's size, grid and obstacles on it.
When deciding battlefield size/s, you must count the creature movement and study the general idea and mechanics behind a duel .
Archers are a liability, tanks are needed, flyers are essential. Example on those 3 types: protect your archers with tanks and disable enemy's archers with preferably flyers, cause they can get there fast and reliably because they ignore terrain obstacles. It's actually a common ruleset, no point in debating the principle.
Your goal is to make every battlefield in such way that certain units can make across it in a turn, because Heroes 3 and 5. Deciding the grid (hex vs squares) is secondary to getting the right size, and so is the presence of obstacles.
(I'll just mention the retaliation and flanking here before I move on: retaliation is quite enough as a mechanic in heroes, do we really need flanking? Was the old system boring so much? I think not, and for the sake of argument I think the heroes without flanking are quite unique and should remain unique as possible to preserve identity. Same goes for the control points. Caravans are a pass cause they move at same speed as heroes and can be intercepted, stuck, etc., they add more flavor than they subtract, imo)
9)+10)Skills and Spells/Spellschools - whatever you happen to choose, a magic build must be equal to a might build in terms of power and vice versa. Making these two balanced and throwing the luck skill, available to all, in the mix to give it a "oomph" should be enough to please the crowd.
Or really something from H3, 4 or 5, in case you cannot think of anything ground breaking. Never forget that the community has a lot of experience in how these behave in the game, by asking the right questions you can come up with an improved concept, which is better than having none, or having one that doesn't hold.
Right questions examples:
-magic defense/resistance?
-which spells and skills are useless(refer to a specific edition)?
-hero specializations, how and why?
-ultimate skills/skill combos or not, and how?
Because these can spark your own ideas as a dev other than help you reach the decision.
11)leveling goals - choosing an optimal leveling process is also something we should look for in previous editions, the only decisions relevant would be from randomness vs free selection vs limited selection when leveling up
12)resource goals - another lengthily discussed topic, resources. Since everyone will be waiting for you to throw a number at them you might lose the point of resources altogether. To not fall in that trap, make a few notes:
a)the type of resources that are a necessity as established so far
-gold: the common resource, used in most transactions ingame
-wood and ore: someone thought these to be logical resources used when building, and noone dared to dispute ever since
-a special resource: required if you want to recruit the strongest tier unit
b)"I'm seeing 4, why should I go above 4?" dillema
-having only four is not only lazy and boring, it also derives the gameworld of content
-heroes is the kind the game in which you need considerable effort if you want to be good at it, and most players at this point not only want that but are good at it, you don't want to deny them challenge like gathering rare materials in time
-it's very likely that most people seen more resources, and are accustomed to having every strong tier creature require a different special resource(imagine you've eaten a sandwich rich with ingredients, and tomorrow you get offered a thin slice of this common thing labeled simply "salami" between two bread slices. Yes, the person that wanted to sell you that isn't very nice. They had some pretty paperbags though, if you're into noticing that kind of stuff at all when you're hungry)
c)Should I REALLY just copypaste the old resources?
-yes
-yes you should
-why would you change them lol?
For argument's sake, if it really doesn't matter to most what they're called as long as the resources are there and plenty, then there really is no point in touching anything, is there
Moving on to second in importance:
Visuals
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The visual focus must be on interactive parts - heroes, towns, dwellings, resources, units and items.
The map is just a background - all background objects and terrain mustn't draw as much attention as the interactive part.
The cursor and the hero movement indicator must also be visually strong, prime example being HoMM3. When assigning colors, sizes and shapes for each of these, choices made must always separate what is background and what is interactive, by every means: color intensity, shadow, outline, proportion, etc.
On top of all comes the UI, which must be universal enough to look non-intrusive - to feel simplistic for the ease of use plus contain all needed shortcuts and a minimap without taking too much screen space. However, the UI design most likely cannot appeal everyone, in which case the best strategy would be to create an UI with a set of skins for it that can be changed by the user freely.
Since the tbs games have a lot of repetitive actions from the player's end, namely battles and town or dwelling access, it would be wise to carefully consider how much animation should be added to these sequences - but, in any case, an option to toggle on/off and speed up/slow the animation in general should be implemented.
Combat details such as unit stack numbers, various information/detail windows and the hero's spellbook are also very important in this regard.
HoMM5's example of battle log and unit turn grid, on-screen information during battles and displayed numbers and effects are fine examples of good and appropriate decisions.
Spell effects and battle animation need to feel cohesive. It would be wisest to avoid designs that lead to intricate moves and spell animations in combat - mind that those actions will be very repetitive during the play.
1.Visual presentation
The game's looks often occupy the majority of a developer's mind when he's attempting to be creative, and sadly even more often makes him blind to many things including reason.
In an era where old trends are again making a comeback, and where products that are or should be dead get resurrected for profit, some choices earn money and praises, and those that are badly estimated and reimplemented get nothing.
In case of heroes, in this day and age most would agree that dark and gritty is the recipe for a comeback(much like the latest superhero movies and series), similar to how a hard-boiled difficulty(much like the Darkest Dungeon and Dark Souls games) would seem more appropriate than dumbed down one to a player base that likes it hard, and is in need of fresh blood that will carry the torch of good gaming and not succumb to casualism, because that is what is happening here atm.
To get back to the point, the recommended graphic themes for this age:
a) indie - still popular, tied to stuff like limited budget, but usually has a lot of quality
b) dark fantasy - this one was always perfect, because heroes were always dark(you go around killing everything you encounter to establish a world dominance, feeling fantastic on the way), tied to stuff like "rarely seen it done well", and usually suffers from plagiarism
c) animu and mango fantasy - if you really have no shame, then go for this one and turn all originality and identity the series ever had into your personal moneygrabbing tool(*note that this comes from a person with an avatar named by a character from Gintama, if I don't wanna see this scenario noone in their right mind should)
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to be continued
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Beerrows of Malt & Magic
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The_Polyglot
Promising
Supreme Hero
Nuttier than squirrel poo
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posted August 28, 2016 02:32 AM |
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Good post! QP-worthy.
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Sanity through drugs. Order yours today!
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted August 28, 2016 09:50 AM |
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The_Polyglot said:
Good post! QP-worthy.
Agreed.
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted August 28, 2016 12:43 PM |
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Overall, I think you reach some points, but you fail on some others. For example, Heroes as dark and gritty fantasy? I wouldn't agree at all here, it should have something tangent to the happy-go-lucky feel of NWC era Heroes, but not exaggerating it into silliness. I also feel that drawing conclusions from community research is the bad way to go. Even if you find a consensus (which I believe it is increasingly difficult as time moves forward), it will still not guarantee much beyond what a popularity contest would. When you scout for potential features you do so with a mind on more than just one thing, like trying to appeal by innovation, having a solid mechanic, or simply keeping the cohesive whole together with no conflicting interactions, so that you don't end up patching up a dismembered and embarrassing game like Heroes 7.
Anyway, it's a good thing to see people taking from their free time to come up with ways to inspire the next Heroes devs with good ideas, and I can only hope that they are inspired by reading these guides.
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Guide to a Great Heroes Game
The Young Traveler
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Madao
Tavern Dweller
desu
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posted August 28, 2016 01:58 PM |
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Edited by Madao at 14:18, 28 Aug 2016.
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Stevie said:
Overall, I think you reach some points, but you fail on some others
Don't we all?
Anyhow, I appreciate heavy critics, thank you and the senpais that noticed me. Well, I may have added a bit much of personal views into this "guide", but
Stevie said:
I also feel that drawing conclusions from community research is the bad way to go
-what would be the point in paying attention to community if this was true?
Not that I specifically said that all conclusions should be drawn from the comm., or that me or anyone should draw all from it, but if noone can be trusted with proper judgment other than ourselves and we should just do what we please with our products we also may end up on the notorious road of H7.
Or this is all quite a paradox, because NWC krewe were similarly just developing a game for themselves, iirc.
Stevie said:
When you scout for potential features you do so with a mind on more than just one thing, like trying to appeal by innovation, having a solid mechanic, or simply keeping the cohesive whole together with no conflicting interactions, so that you don't end up patching up a dismembered and embarrassing game like Heroes 7
This would be the general idea, I agree ofc. I never went into details much, but yeah, openminded + solid + working, that would =something good
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Beerrows of Malt & Magic
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted August 28, 2016 02:06 PM |
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Stevie said:
ways to inspire the next Heroes devs with good ideas, and I can only hope that they are inspired by reading these guides.
Meh, devs should know better than players, like Hota crew or Magno's 5.5.
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted August 28, 2016 02:17 PM |
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@Madao,
All I'm saying is that they should, no, must consult the community, but every idea has to go through a filter of their own design, be it reason, vision or technical challenges. You can't afford to simply blindly follow the guides of forum fans without some form of processing, that's a recipe for disaster.
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Guide to a Great Heroes Game
The Young Traveler
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