vinheim
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 300
Registered: 05-31-2007
IP: Logged

File: The Final Journey rooms.hold (10.4 KB)
Downloaded 64 times.
License: Public Domain

With college finals over and done with, I finally have time to make my own hold. This is a hold I've had ideas for for the past few months and I think I'm about ready to turn those ideas into puzzles. This hold is based off a game I made during a software development project called Shuttle Blade. The game is what some people would call a Metroidvania-type game which is a subgenre of games that have similar mechanics to Metroid games (well at least the older ones). This means that there isn't much gameplay and it is restricted to exploration and collecting upgrades or power-ups to further explore. Somehow, this restricted combination seems to yield some addicting games like An Untitled Story, Knytt Stories, Hero Core, Lyle in Cube Sector and Legend of Zelda games.

Description

So before I talk about the hold, I'll talk a bit about the game. My game is set across 5 regions, a grassland, an underground lava cave, an underwater palace, a laboratory and a swamp. Like I said before, the gameplay is restricted to exploration and upgrades to further explore, but this restriction makes really addicting games. My game is sorta like that, there is a ton of areas to explore, and you get power-ups (3 actually, jumping power-ups, orange-enterer and ice beam, I'll talk about orange enterer later). The difference is that my game has additional mechanics. These extra mechanics are:

Game-specific mechanics

1. Daily Quest system - This is the main core of the whole game. Everything revolves around this system. There are 100 quests in the game. You are given Quest 1 at the beginning, but after 1 day, you can unlock Quest 2, 5, 7, 21, 31. Then these quests unlock new quests the next day, etc. You can take Quest 1 on the first day and 3 quests every day after that for 10 days, so you can't play all 100 quests in one play-through (28 only (1 + 9*3)). These quests give you a variable amount of money, some give you a power-up and some give you materials. There are 20 quests per region.

2. Power-ups. I'll discuss all of these except the jump upgrades which I won't be incorporating into DRoD:
a. Ice beam - Similar to the ice beam from Metroid games, this allows you to freeze enemies in place for a while to use them as a temporary platform. Using them on certain machines also has some effects. I do not think I'll be incorporating this into DRoD, but if I do, it will be in the form of unlocking rooms or objects rather than change the scenery.
b. Orange-enterer - This power-up allows the character to shrink inside orange objects. This has a number of effects. For one, some orange objects, like crystals, will have important items in them. Some objects that are dynamic, like orange bullets can be entered to cross chasms. Some enemies and bosses who are orange can be entered and messed around with from the inside. Again, I'll probably use this power-up just to unlock rooms. I might not even use power-ups.

3. Money/Shop, Enemy Drops/Blacksmith - There are 2 shops in the game and they differ in what they given and what they accept as currency. The normal shopkeeper accepts money and gives you mediocre equipment which increases how much damage you do to enemies or decrease the damage they do to you. The blacksmith accepts enemy drops and quest items and gives you back much more powerful equipment. For my DRoD hold, there will be no shopkeeper, there will be a blacksmith, but he will accept only quest items rather than enemy drops.

4. Bosses (summon spirits) - Though used in other Metroidvania games, this is also something worth mentioning. There are 2 bosses in every region except the laboratory which has none. The 2nd boss in the swamp is the final boss so let's ignore that. Anyways, these bosses are summon spirits. When you beat a boss, its spirit will join you and you can use its powers for just the next quest. If at any point, you find the snake flute, any bosses you've beaten and any bosses you'll beat in the future can be called on at snake baskets to use their power.

Quest List (secreted to save space, ignore text in parenthesis cause they are just my personal comments):


Happy Blocks

In order to explain what the happy block is, I'll first tell you why quests are unlocked the next day. Quest 5 unlocks Quests 8 and 11. This is because when you complete the quest, 2 teleporters appear that allow you to start those 2 quests the next day. Happy blocks change what teleporters appear. In order to activate a happy block, you have to beat the quest while within 5 spaces of the happy block. So if you beat Quest 68 while not around the happy block, the normal teleporter for Quest 69 will appear the next day, but if you beat Quest 68 while around the happy block, Quest 92's teleporter will appear the next day. There are 5 quests that have happy blocks, one per region (1, 30, 52, 68, 94).

Proof that I am working on it

Just to show that I am working on it, attached is the placeholder hold for all of my quest rooms. I will then put them into my actual "The Final Journey" hold after I'm done. I aim to do 3 puzzle rooms per quest for a grand total of 300 puzzle rooms. You'll have to play the rooms from the editor, entrances are at room borders.

FAQ section

And I'm going to answer some questions I feel may come up:

300 quests eh? Don't you think that's a little too much? How are you going to keep each room interesting?
Well, I'm not sure how I'll be able to do it, but I think I can come up with an interesting set of rooms for a quest or 2 per day if I really put effort into it.

How about that previous hold of yours? You couldn't even finish it.
I didn't really like the direction that hold was going in. First of all, there were 5 jobs you could pick from and the story is pretty much the same for each job only you get different effects per each. This would frustrate players cause they would have to play the hold 5 times, it would frustrate optimizers who would have to figure out which job would get them finished with the room the fastest, and the scripting was a mess. I'm sticking to minimal scripting now.

Minimal scripting? How so? With only 3 puzzle rooms per quest, you'd have to have something in between to keep them interesting.
There will be scripting, but it will be restricted to cutscenes (which will mostly just be speech, unless it is the ending cutscene), and the quests system.

How do you play on incorporating this quest system?
I'm going to have a hub area with 100 orbs in it, but they are characters. The orbs are set in a 10x10 grid, and you bump them to start the quest. Orbs take different colours: green means beaten, red means available, but haven't beaten, white means not available, green/red means beaten in a different timeline, not in this timeline and it is available now and green/white means, beaten in a different timeline and not available now.

What is all this timeline stuff you're talking about?
I don't want players to restore, so I'm going to allow them to go back in time to choose different quests. This is going to be tedious in scripting, but it'll be worth the experience.

Secret rooms. How will you do them?
The post-mastery section will detail a hidden story of Beethro and to access it, you'd need to find those secret rooms and conquer the hold. To conquer the hold, simply finish day 10 and finish the gauntlet of quests after it. To access secret rooms, there are 1 per quest (so 100).

How about the blacksmith? What weapons can I get from the blacksmith and what are their requirements?
There are 3: Shuttle Blade, Dark Blade and Fire Whip. For Shuttle Blade, you need: Shuttle Blade recipe, Zirconian Ore, someone skilled with the machinery involved in making Shuttle Blades, and the ability to stop time even if the ability is available in one place, as making it takes a long time. For Dark Blade you need: Shadow Ore, Dark Coral, an inner dark soul and knowing how it feels to destroy something huge, these last 2 things are required for the dark personality needed to wield the blade. For the Fire Whip you need: Fully powered up lava crystal, rare flame herbs, an inner fiery soul.

What will the story be like?
The story will be about Beethro's adventure after exploring The City Beneath (haven't played the latest SmS, but there won't be any conflict as Beethro will lose his memory at the end, and everything goes back to normal). He decides to go on a final journey sorta like Link from Legend of Zelda: Majora's mask. A journey to find a special friend (I think that was the story?) Beethro stumbles upon a cave, has to save this alternate world by teleporting via quests with the help of a giant talking rock, and he leaves after that. The story I've thought about is going to be quite emotional especially near the end when Beethro discovers the truth about.. well, you'll see. Despite me making it sound bland, I think you'll all really like the story. There will be voice acting, custom graphics and maybe a video will be played here and there (scarce though to reduce file size).

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[Last edited by vinheim at 12-18-2010 01:16 PM]

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1917
Registered: 12-09-2004
IP: Logged

Sounds like a huge project. Obviously you've thought about it a lot which is good. I wonder if the game might be better made using some other game making program like rpgmaker or something. Sounds interesting in any case.

vinheim
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 300
Registered: 05-31-2007
IP: Logged

I've made the game already in Game Maker for my Software Development class and the game played out fun so I decided to DRoDify it. It is huge and 300 rooms seems a bit daunting, but I'm making good progress and I think the rooms are good.

I'll be updating my hold every 5 quests I finish (which is sorta like 1 normal DRoD level (15 rooms)). Feel free to tell me what you think of the rooms guys.

vinheim
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 300
Registered: 05-31-2007
IP: Logged

Personal notes, to-do-list, mods and concept art

Because my first post was sort of a heavy description to the whole hold, I'll be using this post to list my personal notes, to-do-list, mods and will be attaching concept art of the mods in one zip file later on when I'm less busy. Another post will be reserved later for the official hold and all its information as the first post contains only puzzle rooms.

Personal notes

Quest 1: E is entrance to monkey village, 1E is ruins somewhere else, 2E is underground somewhere in monkey village.

Quest 2: Entrance leads to boar race owner's house, 1E is house, 2E will be basement

Quest 3: Entrance is lady's house, has magic beans, 1E gotten to from back of lady's house, 2E above that leading to Entrance.

Quest 4: All 3 rooms correspond to planting seeds for trees. The seeds are 2-tiles long.

Quest 5: E is heavily guarded cyclops building...

Quest 11: Entrance leads to 1E to 2E which are all part of the quest to traverse the lost woods.

To-do-list

Need to make following videos after 300 rooms (for intro, will make more after writing a script for the ending):
1. Beethro opening a book
2. Beethro falling down a huge pit
3. Beethro looking up to a giant talking rock (sleeping so eyes are closed).

Mods

Tunnels -> Portals/No change
Oremites -> Invisible for certain rooms (galloping boars/attacking zombies)
Rafts -> Single-square rafts are invisible to give the effect of swimming, raft squares adjacent to only one other raft square look like bubbles with a hole on the side to display entry into the bubble/aura, other raft squares are outlines of bubbles/aura.
Stairs -> Different depending on situation/No change

Roaches -> Male child gorilla/No Change
Roach Queens -> Female adult gorilla if above is Male child gorilla, spawns are fetus/No change if above is no change
Evil eye -> Brown child Cyclops
Aumtlich -> Black adult Cyclops
Spiders -> Chameleon
Goblin -> Small snake/Ferret
Rock giant -> 4-legged rock spider with 4 red eyes (or blue might look nice)
Rock golem -> Rock leg with an eye
Rattlesnake -> Rock-coated snake with tail not coated, tail is coloured white/brown/gray, has 2 spikes on head.
Serpent -> Snake in the form of Dark cloud particles
Adder -> Mechanical snake with drill tail and red crystal on head
Waterskipper Nest -> Silver shiny fish for underwater rooms
Waterskippers -> Black smaller fish for underwater rooms

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[Last edited by vinheim at 12-28-2010 12:52 AM]

vinheim
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 300
Registered: 05-31-2007
IP: Logged

New version of the hold is there! With Christmas being here, it's been a bit busy around here, but I've been able to deliver 4 levels (well 3 and 2/3). Notes on the levels and rooms are on the To-do-list above which will be updated per version. Though I said I'll update every 5 quests, I'm going to be away for Christmas so this is what I have so far.

Some of these rooms may seem easy, but they will probably be tweaked later on. Right now, these are mostly rooms involving a certain characteristic of a creature. Because some mods will be made to certain creatures, some levels will be intro levels (like the current quest 2, and the upcoming quest 1). There will be no intro levels for non-modded graphics like briars where you'll be straight-up challenged by them.

The mods are for story purpose.

EDIT: Forgot to put checkpoints for 2 and 11! Next update after Christmas will see those rooms with checkpoints and 6 more quests done!

EDIT 2: Quest 3: Entrance has unintended solution. The intended way is to release the queen at once. Please do that.

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[Last edited by vinheim at 12-19-2010 02:07 AM]