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Last Ancient -- Introduction, initial design

Name:	Griffin Knodle
Date Posted:	Aug 04, 2007
Rating:	Not Rated
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Blog post

(I tried to make a similar post earlier this week, but it seems to have vanished. Apologies if two show up.)

This is my introductory post for my entry in the Dream Games contest, Last Ancient. The team is just me, Griffin Knodle. Last Ancient is a fantasy action RPG. I'm trying for a general feel similar to Secret of Mana / Seiken Densetsu 3. It's focused on battles and character power/ability development, with a pretty linear plot (but with room for wandering and side-quests). It will have 2D graphics, overhead/three-quarters viewpoint for the main screen, implemented in TGB. Single-player, offline.

I've just finished my first month of work. So far I've spent most of my time on design, both game mechanics and plot outlining. I finished my design document (at least the first version). I also made the first small small step on my battle system prototype/demo. Getting the battles right and fun is my top goal for the game, so I'm going to prototype all of the major battle system features early to make sure that everything seems like it will work out OK.

I'm currently feeling alarmed by how many features I'm trying to include, and how much content I have to (want to) come up with. So I'm first going to draw up a schedule and a prioritized feature list to plan my time. Over the next month, I'll probably spend most of my time building up my battle system prototype and seeing how well my ideas will work out.

My development blog: lastancient.blogspot.com/
- Week 1: A bunch of ideas and brainstorms; this became the start of my design document
- Week 2: Not much (fixing broken computer)
- Week 3: Design document started, battle prototype started (complete with screenshot with terrible placeholder art!)
- Week 4: Design document complete! And here we are.

Any questions or comments so far? I'm new to this community -- what sorts of things do y'all like to read about in these contest blogs?

Recent Blog Posts

List:	03/04/08 - Wings of Albero: Alpha testing begins 02/07/08 - Golden City: Battle engine 09/05/07 - Last Ancient -- Battle system prototyping 08/04/07 - Last Ancient -- Introduction, initial design

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J Sears (Aug 04, 2007 at 17:25 GMT)

It's nice to see someone not doing an mmo for this contest. A singleplayer game seems a bit more doable but still being just one guy you'll have your work cut out for you. My suggestion would be to get a decent battle system in since you've said that's the main focus and then get the player character followed by a couple monsters and then get in the story line/quests. Then with the free time at the end keep working in more monsters. That way you should be able to get a fully playable game before it ends and then get in as many extras as you can before time runs out. Good luck with this hope it works out

Andy Hawkins (Aug 05, 2007 at 00:47 GMT)

B.R.A.V.E for the contest is single player as well.

Kevin James (Aug 06, 2007 at 14:56 GMT)

Quote:
This is my introductory post for my entry in the Dream Games contest, Last Ancient. The team is just me, Griffin Knodle. Last Ancient is a fantasy action RPG. I'm trying for a general feel similar to Secret of Mana / Seiken Densetsu 3. It's focused on battles and character power/ability development, with a pretty linear plot (but with room for wandering and side-quests). It will have 2D graphics, overhead/three-quarters viewpoint for the main screen, implemented in TGB. Single-player, offline.

This quote makes me excited! I love Secret of Mana, and I've been daydreaming about making a similar game in TGB!

EDIT:

May I ask why you are going solo? An entire year is an incredibly long development time for a lone wolf.
Edited on Aug 06, 2007 14:58 GMT

Jason Burch (Aug 06, 2007 at 16:37 GMT)

Shattered Earth is Single and Multi-Player in the Dream Contest.
Edited on Aug 06, 2007 16:38 GMT

J Sears (Aug 07, 2007 at 01:48 GMT)

My point was not to hijack the thread/insult any other teams in the contest. I myself am not in it and enjoy reading about the people who are. I just know there are a lot of huge projects in the contest I don't see ever getting finished and was congratulating this guy on going the less traveled single player rpg. But that extends out to the other single player game guys too.

Griffin Knodle (Aug 07, 2007 at 03:24 GMT)

@ J Sears: Thanks for the advice. I'll probably try to follow a schedule much like that. It's occurred to me that I could even get by OK with only 3 basic enemies if need be (normal, strong physical/weak magical, vice-versa), although obviously it would be better if I have time to add more variety (looks, movement, and specific strengths/weaknesses).

@ Kevin: Fair question re my going solo. A couple of reasons: 1) I'm still not entirely sure whether I'll be able to maintain the time and commitment to see this all the way through, and given that I wouldn't feel right getting other people involved. 2) I'm viewing this partly as a test to see whether game-making is something I'm really meant to pursue. 3) I also want to learn more about my own strengths and weaknesses, and having every part of the process be up to me will certainly accomplish that.

Michael Akinde (Aug 09, 2007 at 13:28 GMT)

Looks nice so far. You probably need to trim down on features even more (you know the golden rule which no one follows - estimate how much you think you can do, and then plan for one third of that) - but look forward to following this. Good luck. :-)

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