Macro-level Design Decision (Add your voice!) | Project Porcupine | Forum

We know we're making a sci-fi roguelike. We haven't ironed out much else yet. I suggest that we think about how we want to setup the game as a whole. I'm not talking about story/setting/history here (aka Fluff), and neither am I talking about the nitty-gritty details of gameplay. I'm talking about the overall, macro-level design that ties together the game. What is starting a new game like? What is the player trying to achieve? How does the player advance from session to session (or DO they advance?)

Here are the main, distinct options that have been coherently suggested on this forum (at least as I see them):

Pure Roguelike: The direction of the game is very straightforward. You start out by making and customizing a character, and fight through a more or less continuous series of challenges until you die (maybe there's a victory condition… but good luck with that). During the game, you make all kinds of progress (advancing skills, gaining equipment and experience), but when you die, you die permanently, and your progress is effectively lost. The sense of achievement comes from starting over from scratch every time, and trying to get further than you ever have (or further than you have with a given character design).

Persistent Player, Roguelike Gameplay(PPRG): The actual gameplay of this version is virtually the same as the Pure Roguelike(above), however before beginning, the Player creates an Entity that is larger in scale than the actual character they control when playing/fighting through challenges. Effectively, you have a framework built around the Pure Roguelike, allowing you to gain rewards and upgrades based on your performance within the Roguelike challenges. Likely, this version seeks to provide more specific goals (randomized missions attached to finite length randomized maps), and emphasize getting your character back alive after achieving your goal. Characters still have permadeath, but over time, the player may unlock more advantages that their new characters would start with.

3X/4X Adventure Game: This version seeks to blend the Randomized (and probably Hardcore) elements of a Roguelike with some of the features of a 4X game (such as MOO 2 or other "Civilization IN SPACE!" games). In one sense, we would likely have two (or possibly all three) of the following "dimensions" of Roguelike random exploration; a space component (exploring a galaxy, or at least a large solar system like the one depicted in Firefly), a planetary component (exploring the surface of worlds); and a local component (exploring a single point-of-interest on a planet, asteroid, whatever; a building or other "dungeon" stand-in). Such a game could either have a Persistent Component (like PPRG above), where your ship or homeworld or organization can be upgraded over time, but survives the loss of your character (just means you have to make a new one, losing that gear and experience), OR it may be fully hardcore; characters are expendible, but losing your ship (or homeworld?) in the space component would be Game Over. In any case, this game would require a tremendous amount of thinking and balancing to tie together the multiple components; the largest scope also means the highest level of difficulty and complexity.

This Thread:
I'll try to put forth the three concepts as I see them in greater detail with Pros and Cons, but I must admit right now – for transparency – that my bias is towards the middle option (PPRG). Please give your opinions of which direction we should go with Project Porcupine, or anything you would like to add to the PROs and CONs. If you envision another Macro-level direction for this game that doesn't fit under the three options I've listed, please make your case for it!

If we can choose a direction on this front, it will take us quite a bit closer to making it real; people will have a context in which to start proposing story elements, setting/history/flavor, thinking about UI, making concept art and preliminary art assets and starting to create a graphical style.

Post edited 6:01 am – January 13, 2012 by Demonac

PERSISTENT PLAYER, ROGUELIKE GAMEPLAY (PPRG):
You start the game by naming your Entity (something like a government, interstellar corporation or even a large starship), and there may be some light customization. The core of gameplay is similar to Pure Roguelike above; you make a (heavily) customized character and go adventuring through randomized maps, but the focus is less "go until you die" and more "go as far as you can and get back alive" or "go until you accomplish a mission and get back alive". By returning, you gain stuff which you can use to upgrade your Entity to make your characters in some way more capable, making future missions easier, and in fact allowing you to undertake more challenging missions.

PROs:

• Same Game, but Grander; in many ways, you get all the virtues of the Pure Roguelike, but while maintaining many of the advantages of the hardcore format, but with the virtues of long-term advancement and a feeling of progress, even though sometimes you die horribly.
• Focus On Missions; a randomized mission list (showing a subset of the many randomized missions contributed by the community) allows you to potentially choose the style, duration and difficulty of play for the current session, and this in turn gives you narrower short-term goals which you can succeed or fail, for immediate feedback
• Hardcore but Not; it's hardcore in that each character you create is constantly at risk of permanently dying, and if they die and fail, you don't succeed in your mission, and you lose your guy AND don't get the rewards. But it's friendlier to casual players because when you succeed, you get stuff that you can keep, and that makes you stronger going forward.
• Story Progress; The randomized mission structure tends towards less strong story than the Pure Roguelike's single-character focus, however, the persistence of the player Entity allows you to progress the story over time, and even if you often fail (and lose characters), putting in the time will allow most players to get through to the exciting, compelling parts, and eventually to the 'conclusion' (though in this type of game you should be able to continue playing after the 'end' of the story).
• Small-Chunk Story; though there may be some drawbacks for overall, overarching story, the mission system has the potential to provide consistent, tight, complete stories which are satisfying for the player, even in a short session.
• Community-Style Multiplayer; synchronized multiplayer probably doesn't fit as well here as in the Pure Roguelike model, and if it did, it would have all the complications and drawbacks I listed there. But with persistent player entities, you open up exciting possibilities for trading and/or auctioning items.
• Tighter Theming; More content is almost always better; more monsters, more items, tilesets, everything. But in the Pure Roguelike model, all this stuff tends to get lumped together into a seriously ecclectic kitchen-sink. There are ways to combat that (maybe instead of one endless dungeon, it's a string of themed maps that you go through back-to-back, still getting more difficult the farther you go), but the modular nature of missions means each of the (potentially endless number of) missions can itself be a tight package of tilesets, enemies, loot and all wrapped in an objective that makes a cohesive package. Then you go on to the next one, and it can be completely and utterly different, but because you expect modular, it's less jarring.

CONs:

• Not Pure Hardcore: There is arguably a drawback to the progress over time. It's hard to define the oldschool values, but there's a reason the previous game type is called "Pure Roguelike"
• Story: Random missions have a lot of advantages, but story likely suffers. There may be ways to counter this, but even a story following randomized trees would be more direct in a more linear adventure. Now, this type of game could be done without random missions, for a stronger story, but you lose some of the other advantages of this model.
• Comparing Scores: While some new metrics are created (you can measure your Entity's progress against other players' Entities), the ability to compare your 'runs' to those of others is a little bit reduced simply because the very concept of Entity progress means you are probably not starting on an even footing (certainly not exactly even) relative to others. In a Pure Roguelike (if there are only 2 or 3 customizations of the starting character, like Class/Race/Specialization), you can compare your runs to everyone, or compare them only to players with the exact same customization, for a level playing field.

CONTRIBUTIONS(Prettymuch Everything from Pure Roguelike, plus):

• Themed Sets (tilesets with doodads, and encounter tables [each encounter table should include at least one monster for every difficulty rating, from your first level one map to high level stuff, plus can include traps and maybe other stuff at some levels, all of which should follow a tight theme like AlienRobots, or SwampCreatures]
• Missions (an objective, one or more randomized maps, including guidelines for those maps [set piece rooms, bosses, story doodads, mcguffins], one or more tilesets and several Themed encounter tables from which to draw random monsters and traps). Example: "Hunt down and kill the infamous Interplanetary drug dealer Randombeard. The mission notes that he's on a Rocky Desert planet (with a random name of its own), and it tells you a threat level and how big the bonus reward for completion. There are 4 mountain ranges in which Randombeard may be hiding. Each mountain range is a separate random map maybe with a beginning and an end, each with a combination of the Mountain and Rocky Desert tilesets, and drawing enemies and traps from the DesertBeasts, ModernBandits2 and AirborneMercs Encounter Tables. One of the mountain ranges has the guy you are looking for and a fixed (but still scaling to difficulty) boss area and mixes in the Mountain Outpost tileset. Each other mountain range contains a clue which either tells you the correct mountain range, or helps narrow it down by telling you one he ISN'T in (which itself might be a bonus quest – maybe something else cool is there instead). If you complete your objective, you return the stuff (and get your bonus), then you have the choice to search any remaining sites or to go back to the mission list for a new one."
• Entity-level advancement options (both skills/talents to buy with your mission rewards, and Entity level equippable gear, maybe in the form of rescued NPCs. Maybe other rescued NPCs could be used when creating a new character to start with some extra bonus; maybe you unlock the ability to start new characters with more/nicer gear, or maybe there are skills or other traits that you have to unlock in order to access more challenging or simply different types of missions)

OPTIONAL IDEAS:

• Random Mission List; When you go to play, you are presented with a number of missions pulled (semi)randomly from the hundreds or thousands added by the community. Say 5 missions; each with a brief description of the objective, longer (paragraph) summary, a difficulty rating and a reward. You choose one mission you want to play, and one you want to save for later. After you play through the chosen one, it and the three not chosen will be cycled for new (semi)random missions, and next time you play you choose between the new 4 choices and the one you saved (and of course, you can save another or even the same one).
• Random Missions Dictated by Story; Rather than choose from the mission list, completing one mission gives you a story reason for the next mission. These are still very random – even the story might be randomized from a tree structure, rather than a single linear story – but they follow a narrative progression of some sort. In this version, you likely have to complete a mission in order to move on to the next one (having to try again with a new character each time you fail, and each time that actual mission is randomized anew)
• In addition to the multiplayer auction/trading functionality, there may be some type of asynchronous group competition; perhaps players can form guilds who compete in some way shape or form (over a period, two or more groups compete, and the one with the most successful missions per capita over the time period gets some kind of guild-based reward or even just "bragging rights" points).
• Player content/conquest/industry; This would be a big, complicated and difficult feature to implement, but perhaps once a player has beaten a mission (maybe only certain mission types), they could take control of the mission planet, and having cleared a map, they could use the same map but build in their own fortifications. These player-built maps (as opposed to the community-based missions, which we would still think of as pure PvE) might make up a separate set of missions to choose from, and each time another player's character dies on your world, you would get some Entity-level currency/experience/loot as a bonus next time you log in.