Forgotten Princess (working title)
About
I've been thinking about actually finishing something, but so few of my projects are finishable due to scale or IP concerns. So, I tried to come up with something that could be done, and is slightly interesting. Zelda 2 always felt like it had potential. I believe its side-view and gravity promotes more complex/amusing fights and movement. In Zelda 1, the X and Y axis are the same, mechanically. The project here actually started out as a Jill of the Jungle (DOS) -like mockup, but then it went in... various directions. Flail-ingly derivative, one might say.
Initial mockup
Exploring, using base ideas from various games, such as Jill of the jungle, Zelda 2, Athena, Gods and Metroid. Some will not be used (Metroid). <30 color palette. Software render is tempting, but a bit of work when it comes to clipping and asset pipelining.
Synopsis
Zera Krenon (placeholder name) - a forgotten princess (warrior?) - wakes up after a long slumber. During her century long slumber (a curse?), a demon king took power and threw the land into chaos. Actually, she finds out that he was actually voted into power, but the people who did so are long dead (they made a huge mistake). There are monsters everywhere but in the cities -> isolated fortresses scattered across the land. Many fortress cities already lay in ruin and work similarly to the Zelda 2 graveyards.
There is money drops, but no shops. Instead the player can donate to rebuild damaged cities (like in Megaman Legends). Thankful NPCs will then donate gear to the player (previously buried perhaps, or new people move in). Donating will give the player a feel-good thing to do even when not needed. It might make every (but not too common) gem drop worth picking up. Perhaps the gems are used as construction-wizard fuel, for rebuilding.
The world map is static, but the items are random. In each dungeon/lair/palace. there's a treasure chamber with pots and treasure chests to loot. The emotion seeing these are a combination of smashing pots in Zelda 3 + a Diablo boss kill. That shop screen in Gods (Amiga) comes to mind as a good visual for a treasure chamber. Unlike Diablo, there will be only a few items available per game, e.g. only one best-sword, randomly selected from an assortment. This means each play-through, the player has to adapt to what is given and is forced to approach the game differently. Perhaps it makes some regions are harder or easier to visit, so in a way the map is also changed. To make the treasure chambers a real party, there should not be a lot of pots or chests with junk scattered everywhere. I think these turn into a bit of a chore ("don't you dare walk past me, you need to smash 500 to maybe get that thing").
There's a topdown map with random encounters, similar to Zelda 2. Swordplay is also similar to Zelda 2. No complex movements like wall-jumps, dashing, or anything which requires a button tutorial. Maybe geared for the NES button count/layout, with simple, key-frame animation*. If there are obscure special movements, they are not compulsory (causing the player to get stuck). Instead they may take a skilled player to a secret area/shortcut. The game world is fairly compact with area criss-crossing. Here I feel that a very large game world is more work, is poorer/diluted, and it makes attachment harder. I liked how Megaman Legends 1 had a central town, so that's a model I'd go for.
* I feel that smooth animation in small-sprite pixel art is somehow jarring due to the low granularity of the pixels. The music (instruments) also needs to match, in this sense. Also, having to do fewer frames allow me to do a wider variety of actions... not that i'm planning to do that many though.
Production schedule
Mon-Fri, 13-19 minimum.
For discipline & schedule integrity reasons, being done with a task means leisure time, or polish existing work, or fiddle with graphics. Jumping ahead is verboten, other than laying groundwork in existing code. Not being done means weekend work, or worst case, extension by full week. The game is fairly simple, with a small map, and perhaps it can be held in that scale by the schedule.
| WEEK | FOCUS |
|---|---|
| =1= | Map graphics: Initial pass, needed for a sense of what the game is going to look like. Design of landmark locations and terrain variety. |
| 2 | Map editor: A stand-alone map editing program. Saves as .raw so photoshop can open in RGB mode. Editing in PS is sometimes preferable when needing to move large chunks around. This way I don't have to do complex undo, selection, buffer and copy paste routines in the map editor. A few bits could be used to set object/npc/enemy spawn points or flags, as there won't be thousands/millions of tile variants. Also, if the bit order is scrambled then first 256 tiles won't be all reds or something. |
| 3 | Main screen turn on & Map scroller: Use openGL for now, but keep open for software render substitute? Simple scanline overlay effect. 640x480? Full screenable. Fixed point. Do multiple update/physics ticks (in this case only for soft camera), and match count to screen update Hz so the game runs at similar speed on all monitors. Load and render map. The scroller needs to understand bounds (possibly 1-axis, X or Y to keep action/threats on-screen). Soft/momentum camera with look-ahead? Note that map contains both topdown "overworld" map and sideview dungeons, towns. |
| 4 | Game objects: Custom linked list or static array for game objects such as enemies, NPCs, drops, treasures, hidden items. Buckets/compartments to help on-screen drawing and collision detection. Basic Object-Map collision detection (multiple physics steps, fixed point). Maybe also Object-Object. Basic player controls for navigation. |
| 5 | Enemy sprites: Back to graphics. Likely needs another week or two, but animation is easier done/tweaked when implementing, so I'm thinking I'll just do the rough, basic foundation frames here for the various enemy types. |
| 6 | Rudimentary enemy/NPC movement: It can be tricky to make smart enemies in a game with gravity. Enemies tend to be sucked into pits or dumbly prowl under platforms, but it doesn't have to be good. NPCs just slide around on their platform or within a region. |
| 7 | Item support: Prepare structures for items and their effect on the player/game. Semi-random selection from larger pool, and placement. |
| 8 | HUD & Dialog support: Implement font. HUD/Inventory. Simple one-way statement NPC talk (sometimes with condition, effect trigger). Readable signs (part of insect/look?). Also do simple splash/hit/particle effects. Like the HUD stuff, these are cosmetic screen effects. |
| 9 | Adventure game flow: Begin to shape how the game actually plays / balances. |
| 10 | Fix & Refactor: Major code cleanup time! |
| 11 | Proper sound effects & Music: While I can do music, I can't do good music. Much of it will be ambient or brief though. Might buy. At this stage, the game will be able to properly present its atmosphere as a guide to the composer. Need: Short title. The overworld map music might need to be more ambient (not much melody) as it will be interrupted a lot by encounters. Not short though. Cave, dungeon and peaceful town music. Short random encounter/battle hectic music. Secret area music (simple like Metroid). |
| 12 | Title screen & Options & Saving: Program flow polish, compatibility tests. |
| 13 | Game cover & Instructions art: For physical or digital copies. |
| 14 | Polish: Also: Scripted movements for intro, ending, maybe some encounters & NPCs. |
| 15 | Polish: Also: Beta testers. |
| 16 | Polish: Also: Demo version with capped level, "Evil Otto" (death orb) a certain distance from start/home. Demo splash screen. |
Maybe sell on itch.io or someplace for quite cheap.
Progress report
- General terrain (grass, dirt, stone).
- Fortress city, and ruins.
- Cave. I think unlit version can simply be un-drawn. With software render implemented, I could fiddle with the palette though.
- Swamp. Foggy grey BG, horizontal smoke?
- Forest. Thinking green background with sunlight breaking trough.
- Four palaces: Grey, Blue, Green, Red. They have different foreground tiles, shared background tiles, but unique treasure chamber statues.
- Starting location (tower with stone slab bed).