Game Inspiration

I Finished the GDD for Astraverse!

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I’m pretty proud of getting the GDD (game design document) finished.
It’s only about 88 pages long but the way I would describe the document is like it being an entire “blueprint” for the game. Put simply, I could literally give the GDD to another developer and they’d know exactly how to design the game in the way that I envisioned it (on a technical and gameplay level at least). Of course, they probably wouldn’t have the passion for the project like I do and they probably wouldn’t be able to nail the same exact “vibe” or “feel” that I would when designing BUT everything’s practically in that GDD.

 

So for this post, I decided to include a section of the GDD which talks about the basic game design concepts of the game:

 

Game Design Concepts

 

A Non-MMO, MMO Experience –

The main concept of Astraverse is to have a highly replayable multiplayer loot and level grind Role-Playing Game in a similar style and setting to Phantasy Star Online that can be fully experienced without an online or MMO server. A popular example of this would be most games in the Monster Hunter series. Almost all of the Monster Hunter games do not rely on MMO servers at all but they feel and play like MMO’s with highly replayable gameplay and a heavy emphasis on multiplayer co-op.

 

Character Creation –

The character creation should have enough depth to feel like a player’s character is a reflection of themselves or at least feel like their own unique and personal character. Just like in PSO, PSU, PSO2 and the spin-offs of said games, the character creation should be an immersive feature, not an afterthought.

 

Stages –

The stages in the game should be randomly generated enough to artificially expand the size of the game world and simulate the experience of exploring entire planets without the use of open-world gameplay. Phantasy Star Online’s randomly generated areas and the original Phantasy Star games’ planetary traveling systems and overworld are both excellent artificial world expanding features that can be easily combined to make a new system that’s simple but effective enough to gain this result.

 

Player-Generated Experiences –

The gameplay should make possible unique “player-generated” experiences/stories through harmonized gameplay systems. For example, a player losing all of his or her health shouldn’t be the end of a game experience. That user experience can be made more unique by giving players a more difficult and higher-stakes situation to deal with as a result of a player’s loss. Games like Dark Souls and Shovel Knight actually handles this quite well.  Other examples of user-generated experiences is the moogle letter delivery system from Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and the open-ended quest system of Divinity Original Sin 2.

 

Single Player –

The single player campaign should have a uniquely captivating story that compliments the gameplay without taking away the focus from it. Also, single player mode should also be at least “hinted” at being connected with the multiplayer experience–for example, the story shouldn’t give the player a unique/exclusive position in the game world (like being the “hero” of the galaxy) but should instead make reference to the player’s traits that make him/her unique. A story character, for example, may even say things like “I know some other rookie Seekers like you” — in effect, making reference to the existence of other players playing Astraverse.

 

Immersive Game Setting –

The setting should be a science-fiction fantasy world without the existence of magic. Most of everything, including basic systems, should have some sort of explanation through the game world’s presentation and lore. An outstanding example of this can be found in Phantasy Star 2 in which a player’s saved data file is directly referenced within the game world as the player’s “memories” and are stored in a “data center” whenever a player saves his or her game.

 

Multiplayer Graphical User Interface –

Menus, shops and anything else that is displayed with the GUI should not hinder the experience of other players but should enhance it. Shops should be accessible by all players at once without the need of splitting the screen or forcing players to shop separately. Player hub information and menus should be restricted to parts of the screen that do not take away from the experience of other players during same-screen co-op.

 

Artstyle and Music –

The art style should feel like a mixture of the look and feel of Phantasy Star Online and Phantasy Star 4 with references to retro Science-fiction artwork and the hand painted or hand drawn nature of Vanillaware’s art style.

The music should sound a lot like Phantasy Star Online’s music but also blended with my own style of trip-hop music.

Link to one of my instrumental albums (as an example): https://lastbenevolence.bandcamp.com/album/pinakamaganda

 

 

I decided to throw that example link there at the end for those who were not familiar with the kind of music I created.

 

– LB

 

 

Development Progress 12/30/18

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Okay, so this time I decided to take some footage from a couple of weeks ago to showcase some things that I’ve gotten done for the month of December:

I enjoyed putting this video together more than I thought I would and it took a lot less time than I anticipated as well so I’m thinking it would be a good idea to make more videos for future dev progress updates.

There was a lot of progress made this month even though the project’s not exactly where I’d like it to be right now.

Besides what’s shown in the video, here’s a quick breakdown of what all I’ve gotten done this month:

  1. All male and female custom player character hairstyles, skins, attachments, outfits, and faces ready for the demo.
  2. The design for the gameplay Hud UI.
  3. A few buldings for environments.
  4. The design for the character creation GUI.
  5. At least one digitally painted weapon type for each class.
  6. The GDD 90% completed (almost 80 pages)!
  7. The new title logo.
  8. The calm and battle tracks for the final stage in the game.
  9. The cannon attack animation for female characters.
  10. The female ADOL idle animation.
  11. Documentated abilities (for a new “trait” system) and Section ID names.

Some of these things took more than just this month alone to work on like the GDD and the composite character stuff for custom player characters.

It was pretty awesome how PSO included the afro as a hairstyle for custom characters despite it not being my personal preference. It felt iconic at the time to have an MMORPG include something like that so Astraverse is bringing it back!
It was pretty cool how PSO had the afro in it despite it being a hairstyle I personally didn’t prefer.  It felt iconic to have an MMORPG include something like that.

As for the game’s character creator, I didn’t finish it as soon as I hoped. A storm hit my area causing a power outage for several hours yesterday, so I wasn’t able to work on the game, unfortunately.

But, that’s okay. Game development is usually a very long and involved process so unexpected setbacks and delays shouldn’t come as a surprise. Besides, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a “perfect” development process for any game up until now.

In my honest opinion, the closest one to being “perfect” in recent memory would’ve been the development of Divinity Original Sin 2 but even Larian Studios experienced a power outage on the game’s launch day.

Any delays here right now are minor compared to that. But, as long as I’m getting at least one thing done (whether big or small) once a day, I’m making progress and I think that’s really the important thing.

– LB

The Planets of Ze’re

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I think it’s a good time to start talking a bit about the setting of Astraverse.

Some of these things I may have briefly mentioned before but in this post, the goal is to go into a bit more detail.

 

Astraverse takes place in Ze’re, a fictional star system that contains 5 inhabitable planets: Jeavis, Ashara, Autovia, Croatis and Hautune.

I took some obvious inspiration from the Algol star system that was in the original Phantasy Star games on the Sega Genesis. I liked the idea of having more than one planet in the game to travel to and experience.

smallPlanet Jeavis

Jeavis

Jeavis is a hot planet and it’s closer than the other planets to the Ze’re system’s star. It has a red atmosphere and a red sky. It’s also covered in deserts. There will be a ring of astroids surrounding this planet which will be visible in the sky from the planet’s surface.

 

Ashara (left) & Autovia (right)

Ashara and Autovia are planets that share the same axis and they rotate around each other during their cycle around the star, Ze’re (this is probably not scientifically possible but I have read about the possibilities of 2 planets sharing an axis and that’s where this idea came from). They both have very similar atmospheres that are very “Earth-like.”

Ashara is a planet that’s filled with a lot of green. I like to call it a “paradise planet” so there’s going to be lots of trees, grassy fields, flowers–stuff like that.

Autovia, on the other hand, will be filled with cities. As a matter of fact, the entire planet will be a gigantic city. This is where most of the people in the Ze’re system will be taking up their residence. There’s this AI that built that were able to quickly build the planet-wide city on Autovia using a technology that can be seen across the sky of Autovia.

 

smallPlanet Croatis

Croatis

Croatis is a planet mostly covered in oceans. Not much is known about this planet from the beginning of the game’s story and because of that, I rather let it remain a mystery until people can actually experience the story and see for themselves!

 

smallnew Hautune

Hautune

Hautune is our “cold” planet. It’s covered in ice and snow and the cool thing about it is that it has a purple atmosphere–so the sky appears purple when seen from it’s surface.

 

I’m planning to add the Construction Tech to Autovia and the ring of astroids around Jeavis eventually, though. Should either show up in the demo of the game or the full game!

 

– LB

Astraverse Game Features and Design

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While I was writing up the progress report for the game, I realized that I hadn’t really explained yet what features would be in the game or how it would be designed. So, I figure I should explain some of it’s features now before moving on to anything else.

Astraverse will have the same basic features of Phantasy Star Online but it will be in 2D and have a few changes to some of the systems and gameplay. For one thing–it won’t be an mmo.

For those who are not familiar with Phantasy Star Online, I’ll explain it this way–It’s a futuristic loot-grind action RPG (Diablo in 3rd person maybe?) but with a customizable button “palette” for assigning weapons, items, and skills to a GAMEPAD. It also has “drone-like” companions that can be fed/raised and equipped to bring into dungeons/areas. PSO also featured randomly generated (or more like randomly arranged) areas/dungeons.

All of that will be included in Astraverse but I’m going to try to expand on some of that stuff.

For example, the button palette system will include all four buttons on a controller instead of just 3. And since there’s no need for the left trigger to adjust the camera anymore, I’m planning on allowing for 4 more slots that can be used by holding down the left trigger/button.

Another thing I’m planning on changing a bit is with the drone companion (they call them “mags” in PSO). They’ll still be robots floating right next to players but they will be more like “pets” similar to the Chao from the Sonic Adventure series of games rather than little drones. They’ll be customizable through enemy material drops in the same vein as the Sonic Adventure games, too. We’ll be able to name them as well.

Players will be able to level up to level 200 and they’ll also be able to combine weapons with other weapons to make them stronger. No need for giving up cool-looking weapons just because other weapons are stronger–there will be a system for gathering a material (we’re calling it “plasma drops”) to level up weapons and combine them with others.

The music in Phantasy Star was one of the most defining characteristics of the game. As a matter of fact, I would say that PSO had one of the best soundtracks in gaming history. The music in Astraverse will sound like a mixture of Phantasy Star Online’s music and my own personal style. I always like to say that it’s “better for me to show than tell” so I’ll post up a sample of a track from the soundtrack soon to give a better example of how it will sound. 

Astraverse takes place in a fictional star system and so there will be 6 planets that the players will be able to explore.

While that may seem a little crazy–it won’t be an open-world game so developing this won’t be entirely unreasonable. I’m planning it out to still feel immersive, though. For example, players will have to board their ship in order to go to a planet.

Each planet will be more like a randomly-generated level. I’m doing it this way to simulate the idea of exploring parts of an entire planet. After everything’s said and done, a player should feel like they are exploring a planet whenever they play through a level–even if they don’t experience everything that the planet has to offer.

There will be “rest areas” that will also randomly generate in between the regular areas that players explore. They’ll mostly be represented by cities and while they are there, players can go to hotels to heal and gain temporary stat boosts as well as go to shops to buy and sell items and equipment.

At the end of each normal planet run, there will be a boss and then players will automatically be returned to their ships to explore another randomly generated level on the planet or fly to another planet to explore that instead.

The art style for Astraverse is currently a digitally hand-painted style. My wife and I are making the art for everything in the game ourselves. Mostly, it’s inspired by 
George Kumitani (the “mastermind” behind the Vanillaware games–Odin Sphere, Dragon’s Crown, Muramasa). We’re also taking inspiration from retro-style science fiction art.  Honestly, I’m not too confident about my art because this is my first time painting anything but my wife does great art. If someone were to help out with the art–I’d be glad to talk if they could pull off some nice stuff similar to the Vanillware games. However, we don’t have a budget for the project as of now so we’re sticking to what we can do on our own.

There will also be a few mini-games that will be included in the final game but I’ll get there when we get there as I have no plans to include any of that in the game’s upcoming demo.

Hopefully this post gives a better idea of what I’m making.

If you like what we’re doing here, don’t forget to subscribe to the mailing list!

LB

Should’ve Started This Before But Here Goes…

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I’m not really sure of what the best opening start to a blog is….

I figured I’d just go ahead and say that instead of pretending like I have all the answers or know completely what I’m doing. 

I’m starting this blog because I’m currently working on a serious game project inspired by my favorite video game “Phantasy Star Online” and I’d like to not only give a proper way for others to track the game’s progress but also (and mainly, to be honest) to gain the project some sort of following so I can put some food on the table while I’m at it.

I’m Daniel (DJ is what my friends call me) and I’m a part-time music artist (Last BeNeVoLeNcE–I’m actually “googleable”)  and, of course, a game developer. 

As you can tell by the title in the heading logo of the site, the game I’m working on is called “Astraverse” and it’s set to be a 2D game co-op RPG that’s A LOT LIKE PHANTASY STAR ONLINE.

I’d even go as far as to say that it’s a “PSO-like” (I get this from the “Souls-like” & “Rogue-like” terms) or a “PSO-clone” but it’s still going to be quite different. For one thing, it’s a 2D game–which already comes with a set of differences. But, it’s basically my own 2D twist on the gameplay from the legendary fantasy sci-fi title that some of us know and love. 

Anyway, I’d like to keep these blog posts as short as I possibly can so that it’s easier to follow (some will probably be long to cover more in-depth topics). I’ll cover the current progress of the project in another post and I’ll do maybe another post or 2 that’ll go further in explaining why I decided to work on this game and how it will be the same and/or different from PSO. 

Thanks for coming–don’t forget to subscribe at the bottom the page if you haven’t already!

LB

What Inspired Astraverse?

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Astraverse was born from a desire to play a new Phantasy Star game on modern systems with anyone at any time. It’s also sort of a response to Sega’s “attempts” at trying to brainwash us into forgetting that anything called “Phantasy Star Online” ever happened in the West.

Before I go on–I want to be clear about something important:

This might not be a game for everyone.

Yeah, it’s an action RPG and yeah it’s definitely HEAVILY inspired by PSO and even the other Phantasy Star games. However, at it’s heart, it’s MY game and even though I want to release it and make a living from it for my wife and I during it’s development, it’s really the game that I want to make so I can play it and enjoy it. There are some features that I want to add to it that are unique and even the art style (at least for now) is something that I personally feel I want to use for the game. I’m the main programmer, music composer, developer, 2D artist, 2D animator and level designer on the project so if you have any suggestions, please don’t be rude about it and I promise I’ll listen but I can’t make promises right now that I’ll deliver on everything you’d like to see changed or added–at least, until the project is funded. I hope that makes sense and I really hope that doesn’t steer anybody away. I just know this game is going to be awesome–specifically and especially for someone who loves Phantasy Star.

One day, my brother and I were like “Hey, why don’t we just make ‘our own Phantasy Star?'” and then it just stuck–I’ve been working on it every since. We’re trying to make a game that we love to play but for everybody, too.

One of the goals is to take care of the main problems that Phantasy Star has always had. For example: One big problem with most Phantasy Star games that we remember fondly is the fact that they depend on MMO servers that always get shut down after a few short years.

Now, before anyone says anything, I know about the private servers for PSOBB. I already have accounts for some of those and I’ve played on a couple of those servers. PSU has a private server coming out, too. But, that looks like it’s going to take a LONG time to get up and FULLY running. PSO2 is never coming to the West. We have to face it. You can play it on the Japanese servers–but yeah–I’ve done that too. It’s quite the hassle–even for a hardcore fan such as myself. 

The truth is that Phantasy Star is “server-dependent.” On the other hand, Astraverse will not be. One of the main goals with Astraverse is to keep multiplayer and cooperative play one of the core features without depending on (or even using) mmo servers. Capcom’s Monster Hunter series has been doing this for years by using local and host/join multiplayer systems. Phantasy Star Zero as well as Phantasy Star Portable and Portable 2 (all of which I’ve played) all used that same idea but that was only because they were on portable consoles.

I feel like it was done best on the Gamecube with Phantasy Star Online Ep. 1 & 2 where players had the choice of playing online or playing 4-player splitscreen offline mode. I mostly played the offline mode with that one and it was perfect because it was like playing an MMO but without the need of connecting to servers. You had this DEEP level and loot grinding experience that was totally offline and didn’t even need to be connected to another machine, another copy of the game, or the internet to play with up to 4 players.

The plan is to have all of this available in Astraverse. The direct host/join multiplayer and 4-player shared-screen cooperative play. No MMO server needed.

But, Phantasy Star Online isn’t the only game that Astraverse takes inspiration from. There’s also the original series on the Genesis as well as the games that came after Phantasy Star Online (all of which I’ve played as well).

Which brings me to another “issue” that some people have with PSO:

The story.

The lore for PSO was pretty deep and it was also pretty immersive. But, the main story was almost non-existent–at least when compared with the original Phantasy Star games on the genesis. It kind of irks me when I hear of people who loved the original games but didn’t enjoy PSO or the games after that–However–I sort of understand where the original series fans are coming from. PSO didn’t have a very engaging main-plot narrative–especially for single-player gaming.

Astraverse will have a main story that will work to not only FEEL immersive (for example: reminding players that they are not the only hero in the story but there are other characters out there–which are played by other players) but also have more depth and presentation–it won’t be a matter of just reading messages left in areas by a character you never see or going to the same NPC after every boss to be told what to do next.

PSU and the games after that all had pretty extensive cutscenes, dialogue, and overall narrative but in my opinion they seemed to lack the intrigue and mysterious feel of Phantasy Star Online and the original series.

My brother is writing the main story for Astraverse and I’m helping with lore. We’re aiming to bring back the overall “vibe” of PSO in the game–including it’s story. Like, for example: what if PSO had a deep single-player (or even multiplayer story?) I would imagine that it would be similar to the longer side missions (such as Seat of the Heart) but that’s exactly what we’ll explore in Astraverse.

There are also other games that Astraverse takes a little inspiration from (like Dragon’s Crown and Sonic Adventure) and I mentioned it a bit in the previous post but I’ll probably cover that a bit more in some later posts.

Don’t forget to stay updated by subscribing to the mailing list! 

LB

Development Progress 12/9/18

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So, how far is this game in development? — Let’s say further than a game should be when you start a game development blog.

Seriously. I’m actually able to see the light at the end of the tunnel for a playable prototype of the game!

Title Screen Track

First off, MUSIC–to me–is one of the most important aspects to the overall “feel” of a game. So, early on, I composed and produced most of the game’s soundtrack. I would say it’s about 70% finished. There are already 26 songs in the game’s project folder!

The demo will include some things that are sorta “non-essential” for a game demo such as the character creator but I feel like the game isn’t really the game without the character editor so–yes, we can still enjoy wasting a bunch of time in the character creator/editor in the demo!

Right now, I’m working on what’s planned to be the first planet that players will visit, Ashara. Not much has been done with it but I have created one of the variations for the backgrounds and with that came the basic framework for most of the game’s areas.

A screenshot I took a few months back when I was testing out the background layers. I’ll be adding more polish later!

That means that all I have to do now is make the background parts for the other variations of the background and place a few things here and there to generate a new possible area. Once the background parts are together, it only takes a few minutes to do the rest of that. The reason for this is that I’m using a development method I heard about called “sandboxing” which means that I make all of the necessary parts to a game so that they are ready to be used in the game before I build levels/maps/areas. This also helps me to balance things and make it all ready for random generation.


On the side of characters and stuff–my wife (who’s helping with art), is doing out first shop npc. We’ll be designing the shops as a cross between the ones in the PSU games and PSO2 as well as the shops in the old Dungeons and Dragons arcade games–totally random and seemingly unrelated but there’s a method to my madness, I promise.


Just a few possible characters that can be made when creating a character for the first time

The playable characters are all “composite” so players will first have to make a character before they can play. Almost every part of the available customization options for characters are already finished. Just a few little things to add and adjust and it’ll be fully ready. I’ve also programmed the character creator but I need to put together the UI and, of course, make it all work together. The plan is to have that done this week.

The title screen is already finished but there’s something I’d like to adjust with it.

And so ends my progress report. Subscribe to hear more updates in the future!

LB