- 17
- Posts
- 8
- Years
- Malaysia
- Seen Jan 26, 2016
As it is with every city, crime is unavoidable in Oaksville, but the situation has gotten worse over the recent years. It was bad enough that most of the wealthy residents have left, fleeing for greener and safer pastures. Without the income or taxes from those people, the city cannot afford to maintain the size of the existing police force. Therefore, with great pain, they downsize the cops to less than a quarter of their previous number.
Without most of the cops, the crimes have increased and the situation on the streets has gotten more chaotic as various groups struggle for dominance. At present, whatever your past and reason is, you have decided to fight back with a group of people dissatisfied with the current situation. How will you fight? Whom will you let into your posse? And what future will you decide to pursue?
That's up to you, leader. Welcome to Street Posse Showdown.
Spoiler:
- Highly Tactical Battles
The distance, positioning, class, available techniques and elements of your troops have a huge effect on how well your posse will fare in the battlefield. Be careful in how you move your people as the enemies have zero moral issues in ganging up on them. Buffs and debuffs will play a huge role as they are not simply small percentage increase or decrease, but affect stats majorly.
Spoiler:
- Mission-Based Gameplay
Instead of fighting just a single battle each time, now your posse has to fight a series of battle in a mission before being allowed to rest and refresh. Your men may have start each mission with a full tank, but will they expend it all in the first battle and go on empty into future battles? Or will they be stingy and conserve their stamina for next battles? Will this cost them in surges? It's your game so you decide.
Spoiler:
- Large Amount of Forces
You may start off capable of only bringing 6 of your members into the battlefield, but that number may reach up to 12. So too will the number of people you can bring into each mission increased as the game goes on. Do note that this escalation of force is not only privy to the player, but also to the enemies.
Spoiler:
- Distinctive Elemental Attributes
Inspired by Pokemon, each character and their attacks have elements. The interaction between these elements will decide how strong will the attack be and how well will the character use the attack. Going with a diverse cast of characters with different elements will help you against most foes than going in with everyone in the same class and element. But, hey, it's your game and it's your call.
Spoiler:
- No Permadeath But Enjoy Your Injuries
There won't be any permanent death when a character is knocked out on the battlefield. Instead the said character will get an injury which may be permanent or temporary. To get rid of a permanent injury, the character need to have quite a long visit to the St. Thomas Hospital, which charge a hefty price for their services. Will you spend money on your men health or you just ignore it and fight on with your personal army of injured cripples?
Spoiler:
- Replaceable Techniques
While your members can learn new techniques by leveling, some of the best and most suitable techniques are only available outside of growth. Those are available through either training or items. Be it equipping a gun to shoot bullets or training in a dojo to learn how to deliver an uppercut, everything is available as long as you got the dosh.
Spoiler:
- Knowledge Is Power
When fighting someone, knowing what he is weak against, what moves does he have and how much punishment can he take before he fold is quite important. This is represented by a knowledge level of what you know about each of your enemy posse. When you reached a new level of knowledge, you gain more details about the posse and their members. At maximum level, you get even to know the enemy characters' traits, personalities and quirks.
Spoiler:
- Randomize Recruits
The people that you can recruit into your posse, with the exception of special NPCs, are randomized in terms of stats, name, gender and characteristics. Who knows, you may be lucky enough to get Bubba, the very friendly ex-prisoner or Sasha, the strong independent woman who need no man.
Spoiler:
- Single Player Story-Driven Campaign
This game development is focused solely on creating a fun story-based campaign based on the exploits and decisions of your character. Most of content are handcrafted and there will be no grind whatsoever just to pad the gameplay time.
- Changeable Clothing
This game character sprites is developed using Spriter character maps. This in turn, allow player to customize the clothing of each of their posse members as much as they wanted, with exception of special NPCs. Never underestimate the joy of dressing up your posse with a theme in mind.
Spoiler:
I started developing SRPG after I get tired of whining and complaining about the absence of good SRPG in the market. The western SRPG I found the gameplay element is too lacking and simple while Japanese SRPG is too grindy for my taste. Even so, I enjoyed them but believed that I could do better given a chance. By making a SRPG that have robust gameplay elements while ensuring all battles are handcrafted, without any grind. A game that I and my friends would enjoy playing. And so began my hard journey into the world of gamedev around 3 years back.
I have created many prototypes and many systems before. Some are as simple as the ones I complained about before. Some are simply too hard and require the players to read a 200 page manual before being able to understand the mechanics due to my effort of translating tabletop rules into video game. Despite all that setbacks, I like to believed that I learned, improved and absorbed all that is good in those system.
And so, 3 years have passed and here I am, bringing you a game with a ruleset that is hopefully, simple to understand and yet have a depth for those who want to master it.
As requested by the rules in the section, let's talk a bit about the software I used in developing the game.
- Construct 2
The main game engine of my game. It is simple to use and yet hard to master. This software is the main reason I can gamedev at lightning speed compared to my SRPG gamedev colleagues who forced to take weeks to implement what I could do in days. Since it use HTML5 and OpenGL, I have capability to deliver the game on all three OS; Linux, Windows and Apple through desktop executable called NW.js.
- Spriter
My 2d skeleton animation software of choice. And yes, it could also be used not only for digital hi def art, but also for pixel art. Very helpful especially for SRPG which have numerous characters sharing animations despite looking differently.
- Microsoft Excel
This software is extremely helpful in making database regarding all of the game information such as classes, item, status effects, personalities and such. Exporting the tables as csv which is then turn into arrays which is used in the game is not difficult once you get the handle of it.
- Photoshop
While I understand GIMP is the most popular graphic software of choice, due to my work, I have a license for Photoshop, which I am more than happy to use. Help me a lot in doing pixel art despite my inexperience in any kind of art when starting out as a gamedev
Usually it's just me. But I have an audiobro helping me in this project. To ensure my ability to keep him focus on the project, I will go for crowdfunding sometime in the future. My previous project died after I wait for months for audio from an audiobro who is too busy with upfront paying jobs and too embarrassed to tell me that fact until I confront him about the months of delay. I do not wish to repeat the same experience.
The demo is completed. It is available through the link below. I will continue working on the assets of the first chapter of the game while awaiting feedback.
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