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[JMickle]

Desert Freaks

A post-apocalyptic nightmare set in the harshest of deserts.
Explore this vast Adventure-Roguelike in the hands of Fargat the Wanderer,
and gather other stragglers to help you survive.
Only the bravest and most hardy shall survive.

Features
> Hours of gameplay! (0.08333)
> Dangerous beasts!

LOG

000 28/06/10 - Case decision, Topic creation, Idea conceptualization
001 04/07/10 - Name change: Caravan->Desert Freaks, work officially begins

[Inanimate]

What a wonderful idea. Will each caravan member have special abilities? Also, it'd be great if you could chat with them. It'd add a lot of personality.

[Melly]

A desert caravan roguelike in the post-apocalyptic would be awesome.

[Saker]

Good luck with this one ,JMickle 

[belbeeno]

I had my eye on this one as well.  Looking forward to how your game turns out!

[JMickle]

Thanks guys!

I'm really enjoying designing this game. I'm gonna be out of own til friday, which is good because I get to design it all on paper, without bogging down in code until it's all done.

It's also an idea I've wanted to make for a very very long time, primarily inspired by Mount&Blade (although it would be hard to detect the influence). Any ideas from everyone would be very much appreciated! Get yourself a name in the credits

At the moment I'm seeing it as a roguelike rpg with a party of 5, with randomly generated levels. The characters in the party will have some simple stats, hp attack defence and speed, and battles will be vastly dice-based, much like >Fighting Fantasy. Each character will also have a special trait, which can be good or bad. Every time you level up you gain a small amount of health, and get a trait/stat reroll. I didn't want grinding to be something much too useful, and I think this is a good way to counter it. So it means you can play very quickly, or you can grind to gain a party to suit you, but still not be much more powerful than someone who doesn't.

I'm slightly sorry about not putting in water/food and general desert survival as a main mechanic of the game, so I am trying to think of ways to put it in and linking it up with the rest of the mechanics. Still early days.

I'm thinking I will put in a story, but I'm not too sure about it yet, or what it will be. Gotta think about that.

Inanimate - That's a brilliant idea, and I'm most likely going to put it in :D Yes, as i said there are going to be special unique traits. I am also going to make randomly generated stories for all the characters, so there's something nice to read about everyone. Also I'll try to get it linked to the stats and items they spawn with, to give much more personality.

Melly, belbeeno - As soon as I saw the cart I knew it was the one for me I instantly stopped looking and made the topic.

Saker - Thanks

[Inanimate]

JMickle, perhaps each character has a randomly chosen "personality" from a set that dictates what they say when you talk to them? For instance, when they level up with the personality "Brave" they say "I feel like I can protect you even better now!", but with the personality "Nihilist" they say "No matter how strong I get, it's probably futile."

[JMickle]

My plan was already something along those lines. Great minds, eh? 

[Inanimate]

[belbeeno]

The vision I had for the cover was a trading game, where you go from town to town setting up shop and sell your wares.  You would accumulate wares from exploring dungeons (lawful alignment), defending against robbers and collecting their equipment (alignment independent) or enslaving the innocent (evil alignment).  Your alignment determines the sort of crowd you attract who would have personality as mentioned by Inanimate (good guys may not be capable fighters but good traders, bad guys may be good fighters but kleptomaniacs).

The goal of the game would be to accumulate enough traders and mercs following you and enough money to build a settlement.  If your followers decide to settle, they build shops if they are traders or go on quests if they're mercs.  World map would be top down, and in town/dungeon would be side-scroller, like in Zelda 2.

Sort of an ambitious idea, but I couldn't move away from it.  Ultimately that's why I decided not to do it; if I started trying to birth this idea would probably never end.   

[JMickle]

I'm back off holiday and I'm gonna get straight into spriting, mockups will come soon.

[mcccclean]

This sounds freakin' awesome. It would be really cool if you could work survival mechanics in there, too. Not enough survival mechanics in post-apocalyptic settings, if you ask me.

(though this does sound sweet even without them)

[JMickle]

If this works out well I could do a whole series of them, with all different settings. Which would be nice (Y)

Planned character classes (subject to change):
>Matador
>Body Guard
>Nun
>Child
>Geek
>Dentist

[Canute]

  Oh my, that must be the best character classes I've ever heard about in a video game! Would be cool if you could choose a mix of two of them, I'd be Matador Dentist every day!

[Inanimate]

Perhaps the previously discussed "personalities" could be integrated into the class names?

"Cowardly Matador", "Brave Dentist", "Melancholic Geek", "Irascible Nun", "Awkward Body Guard", "Nihilist Child" are examples.

It would just go "(Personality Adjective) (Class Name)"

[JMickle]

That's an idea. I was considering doing dual classes after Canute's comment, but personality could be the extra boost I was looking for to vastly increase the variety of characters.

i.e
>Matador
>Body Guard
>Nun
>Child
>Geek
>Dentist = 6 classes

>Matador
>Body Guard
>Nun
>Child
>Geek
>Dentist
plus
>Precarious
>Irritating
>Exciting
>Interesting
>Ferocious
>Resourceful = 36 classes.

I can just go to 10 types of class and personality and get 100 different outcomes.

[Inanimate]

Will your party members be AI based or be controlled, or just be passive?

[JMickle]

My basic idea is that you control a party of up to five in a (probably) procedurally or randomly generated "dungeon" (just terminology) set in the desert. You fight and hopefully the vicious monsters of the desert in turn-based battles, where you yourself control the whole party. The main character, the one you start off with, has about twice as much health as his party members, and is the only one needed to be defeated to lose the game. Because of the way I worked out the battle system I don't think I could make the other party members AI controlled. The most control they have over themselves is in one of the special traits "Passive", meaning they won't attack. Nuns start out with this trait, but they are still a valuable member of the party. (no they don't heal party members, where's the realism in that )

Anyway as far as working on the ACTUAL game I have been busy with music commissions so I'll maybe have something done only by tomorrow or if I'm lucky by the end of today.

[Inanimate]

Excellent, there aren't enough rogue-likes with full control over the party.

How are you going to make personalities affect characters, then? Stat bonuses?

[JMickle]

Something like that. I'll look for something more interesting though, like something to do with survivability or something. We'll see.