A Dragon Warrior Monsters Game in Off Topic

ID:61250
 
Apr 4 2009, 7:48 pm (Edited on Apr 5 2009, 12:07 pm)
Well, I'm having mixed feelings about making a post about this, I've actually been working on this game for a fair bit of time now (off and on), but I've heard some advice to the number of "as soon as you announce a project you lose interest in it", but I think I'm getting to the point where I should at least mention this project and see if there is any public interest in it.

Anyways, as the title suggests, I'm working on a Dragon Warrior Monsters game. Dragon Warrior Monsters was probably my favorite gameboy game ever, it combined the battle system of the famous Dragon Warrior series with a monster collection system similar to Pokemon. Instead of evolving, you can breed monsters, and their offspring will inherit their abilities and statuses.

I've gotten a fair bit of it done, I've got a somewhat workable battle system, I've got some mapping done, I've been collecting icons of the original monsters, and I've entered a good bit of data for individual monster info.

My overall goals for this game are to: 1) Replicate the original game as much as possible, so that it has some of the original feel. 2) Expand upon the original game, people won't simply want a remix of a game that they can buy for 15$ (including the cost of purchasing the gameboy) or emulate. And 3) Provide some multiplayer functionality. This is a BYOND game, and shouldn't simply play out as a simple single player game.

The biggest thing I'm looking for is input. That's why I'm making this post. Especially for #2 and #3 above. I'm looking for ideas and suggestions, anything from what potential new features do you think would be cool in a Dragon Warrior Monsters game, to would you prefer Watabou or Warabou to be the main spirit?

I'd also consider offers of help. I'm trying to make this a solo project as much as possible, but eventually I know I'm going to need help, at the very least with iconning. Right now, icons are a combination of icons taken from the original Dragon Warrior games, and some icons from Rise of Heros, which is open source. Obviously, I'm going to eventually want some more consistency, but as my iconing skills are next to null, and I didn't want to hire on an iconner for a project that may never happen...

I can provide more information on the project, where it is, where it needs to go, if there's any interest. If not, I don't see the point in rambling on about it.

Edit:

#1 Apr 4 2009, 10:14 pm
I have a few comments on this.

I loved the DWM games as well and DQM: Joker wasn't terrible, either.

Please use the DWM style naming scheme as the new cutesy feel to the Dragon Quest games is one of the things that disappoints me. (DQ8, DQM: Joker, ect. The ones they started naming Dragon Quest instead of Dragon Warrior.) I'm looking at you bubble slime! Where is my babble? There are a lot of others where they changed the names too and ALL of them are terrible.

would you prefer Watabou or Warabou to be the main spirit?
Adding character alignment could be a solution to this.

It would be neat to see the key feature from DWM2 in your game. Meaning I'm thinking generated content.

You definitely need tournaments too.

#2 Apr 4 2009, 10:32 pm
The different tree towns that you start in, as well as being able to travel to the different ones would be nice.

Greattree,
deadtree,
greatlog, i think those were some, i can't remember all of their names.

Class system is a must, this is a great idea for a BYOND game.
#3 Apr 5 2009, 9:33 am
What a coincidence. I've been meaning to design my own DWM game of sorts, but my ideas for it are different from how the mainstream ones are.
#4 Apr 5 2009, 12:07 pm (Edited on Apr 5 2009, 12:26 pm)
As for the tree towns, as of right now, the main town is called GreenRoot. The majority of the town is built around the central tree, with the arena currently inside the tree. (I may have to move more inside the tree later on, but for now it's just the arena)
Anyways, I mocked up my own town icon to represent it on the map. (See the original post, I added it there) I apologize already for my mediocre iconning. This is the only icon I've somewhat created from scratch, I basically took apart town icons from the original game and rearranged it to resemble my town.
You've got the tree in the center of the town, with a few buildings on the southern half and the farm on the north half. That gray cylinder in the bottom right is a tower... but as I type this out, I realize that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to build a tower next to a freaking tree, so I may have to remove the tower... (I suppose that's a good reason for doing these posts)

I'm not sure if visiting the other tree towns will be possible. I'd feel too obligated to try to replicate the others exactly, and I wouldn't want to feel like I'm rewriting canon. I'll probably make references to the other trees, (you'll probably run into masters hailing from GreatTree, and GreatLog), but I doubt that you'll actually ever visit them.

As for keys, well, I had a hard time deciding how exactly to have the game organized. Each DWM (I include DQM) had a different method of getting around, the original DWM used only dynamic (randomly generated) levels, the second one used static levels, with some dynamic extras, and DWM3 (Caravan Hearts) and DQM: Joker used only static levels.
Anyways, I've decided that, for now, I'm going to take a more traditional approach, with one general overworld, split into several sections, rather than several distinct worlds.
Truth be told, though, I don't know how well dynamic levels would work for an online multiplayer game. (And I'd be lying if I said that the difficulty of coding dynamic levels wasn't part of it)

#5 Apr 6 2009, 9:08 pm (Edited on Apr 9 2009, 11:46 am)
I'm actually very excited to see a Dragon Warrior Monsters game. 'Tis a shame you're not looking for testers ;p.

Anyway as far as what you've posited, I propose an alternative:

Or maybe not make randomized maps, you could just keep the maps as static, and merely move the warp-hole to a random point on the map, thus creating a necessity to explore the map to look for the warp point and still stay somewhat true to the feeling of the original game.

Just a suggestion, I don't know anything about programming so I haven't the faintest clue on which would be easier from a coding point of view.

On the idea of tournaments, I second the idea of making them both optional and obligatory, with the optional being player sponsored, and thus having no impact on the story of the game. Obligatory 'could' follow in the spirit of the first game, where it was required to unlock more areas of the game, but if it was to be used to that extent, then what of hidden Gates? How would that fall into the game?

(And though I think I'm probably wearing thin on you guys by now) About sprites, what about simply using the ones from the first & second games? If in keeping with the spirit of the first games, the task of ripping the sprites off the game itself shouldn't be so hard, and would probably obviate the need of an iconer. Or maybe make it possible for someone less skilled to simply compile them? I can use an emulator to rip the sprites, I only need sizes from you and then maybe I can get in touch with someone else so they can turn the stock into sprites.

To this end, I can volunteer to take the individual snap-shots of every monster sprite ;3 you'd just need an iconer to compile them into whatever format BYOND uses. It'd be nice to have some specifications though.
#6 Apr 9 2009, 5:15 pm
Zephyrshade wrote:
I'm actually very excited to see a Dragon Warrior Monsters game. 'Tis a shame you're not looking for testers ;p.

Anyway as far as what you've posited, I propose an alternative:

Or maybe not make randomized maps, you could just keep the maps as static, and merely move the warp-hole to a random point on the map, thus creating a necessity to explore the map to look for the warp point and still stay somewhat true to the feeling of the original game.

Just a suggestion, I don't know anything about programming so I haven't the faintest clue on which would be easier from a coding point of view.

On the idea of tournaments, I second the idea of making them both optional and obligatory, with the optional being player sponsored, and thus having no impact on the story of the game. Obligatory 'could' follow in the spirit of the first game, where it was required to unlock more areas of the game, but if it was to be used to that extent, then what of hidden Gates? How would that fall into the game?

(And though I think I'm probably wearing thin on you guys by now) About sprites, what about simply using the ones from the first & second games? If in keeping with the spirit of the first games, the task of ripping the sprites off the game itself shouldn't be so hard, and would probably obviate the need of an iconer. Or maybe make it possible for someone less skilled to simply compile them? I can use an emulator to rip the sprites, I only need sizes from you and then maybe I can get in touch with someone else so they can turn the stock into sprites.

To this end, I can volunteer to take the individual snap-shots of every monster sprite ;3 you'd just need an iconer to compile them into whatever format BYOND uses. It'd be nice to have some specifications though.

I have been using the monster sprites from the original games so far. They fit pretty will in the BYOND requirements. Perhaps if you could provide me with an email address at chessmstr@hotmail.com or reply with an email, I could get in contact with you.