Tag Archives: design document

Mecha Asylum Design Document

Posted by Jacob Santos on December 30, 2008 Comments Off

The current game is a little convoluted and broken, which means it is unplayable until I rewrite it. I’m going to focus on a minimal feature set for the next version to get the game playable and improve the quality of the features. By keeping a small feature set, I can know ahead what features I should complete and how long each feature will take. Also I’ll know when I’m finished with the project.

This time I’m not going to open the game until I’m completely finished and the game works after testing and acceptance test cases are completed. In order to improve the quality, a lot more testing is going to be done for this game and all of the games I make in the future. It will take longer, but focusing on improving the quality before players bring it up should improve the reputation of the games.

Story

The main setting and story line will change. The game will take place on an alien planet, the soldiers from different fractions crash landed and need to rebuild their fleet to get home. The other fractions aren’t going to make it easy for the others. The players will need to regroup, rebuild, and fight off the enemy to escape the planet and head back home.

Focus Points

The focus points will be territory, soldiers, research, and buildings. These will be tied together and balanced, so that the meek aren’t completely overrun by the strong. There will also be time limits and the success condition will happen over several months.

I want the game to last long enough to where new players that joined late can learn the game, group with people and appreciate the game long enough to where when the next game comes along they can just jump in and start as soon as possible. They might not win, but they’ll have the opportunity soon. I also don’t want the game to be over soon enough to where none of the players had enough time to accomplish the objectives and enjoy the game.

Territory

Research items used to escape the planet will appear at different locations. Only when the fraction has captured the research item can the item eventually be used to escape. This will mean that a grid based system will need to be used in order to coordinate where the research items and what land the fractions hold.

LandThe Grid structure of the game will limit the amount of land the players will be able to fight over and hopefully should limit the amount of players are in the game. I believe I’m going to have a main grid that covers the planet, sort of like latitude and longitude. Then sub grid coordinates with those and so on. The containers will be big enough to hold the player and a number of buildings.

This will mean that one piece of land is actually an square acre or larger depending on the amount of buildings I finally allow. Actually, I think I’m going to do it in sq. miles and sq. kilometers.

This should allow for quick access to where players are currently and I won’t actually have to populate the entire planet with coordinates. By calculating the distance, I can figure out how long it will take for one player to attack another. At the most, since the database table could grow to be very large, or at least the coordinate table with many rows. It won’t take that much space since the most the table will have is numeric values with one of those pointing to the player which holds that piece of territory.

There will also be mining to harvest precious materials in order to pay for mecha suits, buildings, and research. The amount of mines will only be preset for the initial land of each player. Captured land will be randomly generated and will remain until the game cycle is complete.

When the land is destroyed only the buildings on that land will be destroyed or captured.

Soldiers

The mecha suits from the previous game will be used in this game as well. The mecha suits will gain attributes that will be able to be extended, so that balancing can happen quickly. Since there are only going to be five mecha types, the base attributes might be hard coded with the modifiers held in the database.

The mecha suits will be built from buildings, and require men that will also grow depending on the amount of food, research, and housing. Housing is another type of building that can be constructed.

The different suits have different capabilities that allow for different maneuvering, strengths and weaknesses. Some of the land types will not be able to bring down the flying types, no land to air missiles. The strength and weakness ratio will be dealt with the Rock-Paper-Scissors usage. This will improve the balance and prevent one player from building one type to rule all. That said, there is still one type that is all powerful, but will be extremely expensive.

The attributes will be about four or five to start out, but I can envision that future versions having more. The difficulty is that the more attributes the harder it is to balance the game. I don’t think more than 10 will ever be used, but that will decide upon later and depending on the game play.

There will also be a mechanical device that will spy, thief, and capture land/buildings. This device, called a probe, will not have any attack capabilities, but will have other purpose during the game to help find the main research items.

Research

Research will be very important and I will build a tree much like the grid idea. The Research will have dependencies, amount of time to complete, and materials. I’ll create the tree after the component is completed and think of what will go into the tree after it is complete.

The feature seems to be easy to create, but it will be difficult and time consuming thinking of all of the research items.

Buildings

There will be different types of buildings for different purposes. The list below has them all:

  1. Housing

    Used for the amount of men will be available. Housing will be needed and when these are destroyed, then the available mecha suits can not be used beyond the amount of men available. Will also double as food suppliers, because there won’t be a food building type.

  2. Mecha Manufacturing

    Builds the mecha suits. I’m undecided, if one building will build one mecha suit, or if the building can be queued to build all suits for one type at at time. I’m going with the former, but the latter will allow for greater flexibility.

  3. Research

    These types of buildings will be required for research, there will be different research buildings. There will also be one main building for improving the research speed and level.

There will not be much macro-managing with the buildings, so besides the research buildings, there won’t be many buildings to develop items.

New Player Protection

The game will employ “New Player Protection” to keep stronger players from attacking new players. This will be based on the strength of the player and as long as the player doesn’t attack anyone else. This should allow for new players to grow and learn the game without being harassed by other stronger players.

When the player has graduated from this status, there will be ranges for attacking. This is only in the event that the game reaches enough players that each range has enough players within it. I’m going to try to develop the ranges to where it is dynamic and allows for recalculating the ranges based on growth and the amount of players.

Game Cycles

The game cycles will continue until all of the research items are collected and a single fraction has collected all of the pieces needed. The research items will not exist all at the start of the game. I want to allow the game to continue for at least two or three months before all of the needed items are available.

There will be more than one research item available of the most basic items, which will be available at the start of the game. Other ones will become increasingly rare as the game goes on. The first couple of cycles will probably require that the research items be “dropped” near the territories of the players, so that they can be found within the five or six month hard limit, where the game will automatically recycle whether or not anyone “won.”

Collecting all of the research items is the win condition and required of the players to track the components down. This will force players to try to collect as much territory as possible.

Possible Modules

Modules are game components, which can hopefully be used on other games. If developed correctly, these modules below can be used in future and past projects. They will be developed separated and updated on all of the games, since they aren’t tied to any single game code.

The games will be developed around modular components to reuse as much code as possible. Each game will have separate components that won’t or can’t be used elsewhere, but as much code as possible will be transferred to the Quantum Game Library as possible.

There will be the code that will exist in QGL and the plugin code for the game engine that will use the QGL code. The code that isn’t dependent on a database will be committed to QGL and the code that does rely on the database will not be part of the QGL.

  1. Territory Grid
  2. New Player Protection
  3. Research Tree

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Heat of the Race Design Document

Posted by Jacob Santos on August 28, 2008 Comments Off

Heat of the Race is a racing simulation, that is text based. The player customizes their cars and bikes and competes against other players. The setting will take place in the future, so that the car and bike components and racing locations will be futuristic.

The player will win money from races and will be able to buy better parts to go faster, and complete races better. There will be racing teams that will help each other and will be able to compete against other teams to win greater amounts of money.

Cars / Bikes

The cars and bikes will have attributes that each part will increase or decrease depending on the quality. The speed of the car won’t matter much, if the vehicle can’t turn at the top speeds. The amount of upgradable parts will be small with the first version, but the amount will increase as development continues.

There are two types of bikes and cars, one will be with wheels and one will be hover crafts. The player can have both types, and unless they have both they will be restricted on which race track they can go on.

Some attributes don’t really make sense, since the player will not be able to control the car and will get the results quickly. It is text based, so there isn’t much that can be done to allow the player to control the vehicle. Future versions might have something from old Nintendo and arcade games to improve the racing experience. The first version will just give the results immediately.

Race Tracks

There will be several race tracks with different qualities of turns, wetness, temperature, etc that will affect the cars. The race tracks will also be one different planets and in outer space. There will be attributes for the race tracks and will also have grid layouts. This will allow for calculating the car attributes based on each race track, like it would if they were playing an actual PC racing game.

Parts

The cars and bikes will have upgradable parts, which will allow for improving the vehicle against other players. The full list has not been decided and will be developed after the game code is completed. The parts will be entered dynamically, so that new parts can be added quickly and current parts can be modified easily.

Teams

There will be the team leader that will control how much the fee to join and stay in the group is. The fee is optional, depending on the team leader and the team leader can use it for gifting players parts and setting as a betting pool for racing against other teams.

I want to develop the team mode to have many enhanced features for controlling the team almost to the macro-management level. I want to allow the team leader to do many tasks for the group, but have most of them to be optional.

This will most likely be a module, so that it can be applied to other games easily and quickly.

Conclusion

This game will be developed next year, during the first or second half, depending on the number of projects that have been completed at that time. Battle Machines will be developed before this, and this game will also be developed after Earth 3045.

I think I might create a simple version, much like the Farmer Sim pbbg, and then continue to add features after the games are finished. I think the goal will be to release very simple game which have all of the features. This will allow the games to be playable, but not take more than a month or two to complete and build off of the other games that came before it. Therefore teams might not be part of the first version.

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Farmer Sim Design Document

Posted by Jacob Santos on August 24, 2008 2 comments

Farmer Sim PBBG

The concept of the persistent browser-based game is simple, you grow crops and raise animals to sell to the different markets. It is a basic simulation of farming, partially because I haven’t farmed a day in my life and I want to finish the project quickly.

There are a few features of play that need details.

  1. The first is land, which will limit how much you can grow and, or raise. This also includes the amount of help is available to tend the land.
  2. The seeds you can plant,
  3. the animals you can raise,
  4. and the amount the market pays for the animal and harvest crops.

Land

Every player will start out with set number of acres. The player can buy more land later in the game, when the player has the money for it. The player’s avatar can only maintain a limited amount of land, before the player will need to hire help. There will be several kinds of help ranging in how well the “help” works.

Cheap help will probably not do much for the player, but expensive help might not be what the player needs either. There will be a balance between the cheap help and the expensive help in the abilities. This is so that each kind should be used. The player should be able to get away with using all of one kind, won’t be as efficient, but will work.

The player will be able to buy land outside of where the player starts. The player will also be able to hire soil experts to test the land to see how well the land will grow crops. To make it simple, the land will either be suited for crops, animals, or both. The land each player starts with is suited for both.

The price for land will be set by how far or close it is to the cities. Having land close to cities has the advantage of being able to deliver supplies faster and receiving money sooner. To simplify the game, deliveries time will be set and can not be upgraded to shorten the time. This will allow for players to buy up land away from the cities for cheap and still grow or raise animals and not be limited for long to their set acres.

Land Attributes:

  • Growth Type: crops, livestock, or both
  • Distance From City
  • Closest City
  • Acres
  • Player

In future versions, I want to have a grid for the acres for the number of cities and create new cities when new players exceed the range of the city. This simple attribute set will allow for unlimited amount of players to be the equal distance from the city, while also allowing for unlimited amount of land to be bought at different ranges from the city.

Worker Attributes

  • Acre Limit: How many acres of land the worker can tend with the base efficiency.
  • Crop Efficiency: How well the worker can tend crops within the acre limit.
  • Livestock Efficiency: How well the worker can tend livestock within the acre limit.
  • Hours of Work: How long the worker will perform their duties before ending their “shift”.
  • Price: How much it costs to hire the worker.

Even the player’s avatar has the same attributes, so this will allow for easier balancing of the game. It will also allow for adding new workers in the future. I only plan for three other types other than the player’s avatar worker. I’m not sure if I’m going to tell the player all of the attributes, but they will be pretty simple to figure out in the first version.

The cities will have their own attributes, but those will be kept secret from the players. The land will also have a concept of taxes and overhead. This will prevent the player from gaining to much land and money too quickly. The player will need to make at least so much to prevent bankruptcy. Going over the overhead amount will give the player profit to enjoy spending on more land.

I’m wondering if the taxes and overhead can be built in to the market of buying seeds / animals and selling crops / processed foods. If the supply is too much then the player will make less than what was spent to buy the seeds. This can sort of work like gambling in that the player might lose money on the market or gain money on the markets.

Seeds

I’m going to limit the amount of seeds, but I’m going to develop the game to where I can easily add more later. The seeds will have attributes that will allow the player to predict and know when to plant the seeds and how long it will take.

Seed Attributes:

  • Plant Season: When the seed should be planted, so that it can grow
  • Growth Length: How long it takes before the seed is fully grown and can be harvested
  • Base Price: How much the seed costs
  • Sell Base Price: How much the crop goes for in the market. This fluctuates based on supply and demand.

The seasons will go by and the player will grow the seeds. The player will be able to grow crops many times during the different seasons, so that the player will be able to make enough money by growing enough crops during that season.

Seeds

  1. Strawberries
  2. Corn
  3. Rice
  4. Green beans
  5. Cotton
  6. etc

The problem is that each seed has to be researched, I want to have at least 10 or at least three that can be grown per season and several that can be grown all year around. It might come to it being that all seeds can be grown all year around and just have it to where next version the season are restricted to certain seasons.

Livestock

There will be only a few livestock that can be grown. The basic one of course will be cows to get milk and cheese. Chickens are another. You’ll be able to breed the animals to get more and there will be a lifetime for the animals.

The processing, for the meats, milk, cheese, etc will be automatic. In future versions, it will require processing buildings to process the animals. In the first version, it will be done automatically.

Markets

There will be a market for buying seeds and animals, and a market to sell crops and processed meats, cheese, etc to the cities. The buying will be a set price, but selling will be based on supply and demand. Also, the demand will be based on an algorithm that will change based on the “needs” of the population at the city. So each city will have different demands and once that demand has been reached the sell price goes down.

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Mecha Asylum High Concept Document

Posted by Jacob Santos on November 20, 2007 Comments Off

High Concept

An intergalactic strategy science fiction game that takes place in another universe. The player mines for resources and attacks for land. Gain prestige and rank alone, or with the help of a team. Develop strategy between the warring factions, resource gathering, and city building.

Player’s Role

The player’s role is to protect and manage the mining station. The mining station needs support structures and people to maintain them. The player manages all of this, while also searching for new territory with resources. The player has a minimum amount of resources that have to be sent back, so the player has to meet that requirement.

The player is also a commander and can have soldiers defending the mines or attacking to gain new territory or gain another player’s land. There is a limit of how many soldiers can be produced and soldiers aren’t cheap, so it is up to the player to manage the survival and strategy to make sure that the soldiers make it out alive.

The player’s avatar is a mechanical suit that can be fully customized with upgrades to the various parts. More can be done to the player’s commander mech than the soldier’s armor. The avatar will be static and won’t be seen except for a few areas.

Primary Game Play Mode

The game has 2D top-down view of the game’s field or arena. The player can see where buildings and resources are, and other game items of interest. The primary purpose is laying buildings for mining, defensive structures, and offensive structures. The field expands to whatever the player needs it to be.

The primary mode is where the player lays objects on the field, the companion mode which is a subset of this one, is where the player can pick which field to lay objects (structures, soldiers, etc) or attack, if the field has not been captured. This mode is split into regions and more accurately described as a sky view, whereas the primary mode is closer to the ground.

The player lays buildings by dragging structures from the left side menu to the center area which holds the sections which will hold the structure. The structures can be moved and removed as needed by the player from within the center area, also by dragging.

The types of challenges the player will face are ones dealing with efficient layout of roads and buildings. Placing defensive structures that closely protect the mine, within the limit of the amount a region can hold. Not every section will be able to hold a structure (water, “cliffs,” “mountains,” etc).

The home region will expand out indefinitely, outside regions will not and the player will have to choose between the different objects that can be placed in the region to best utilize the space available.

Genre

The game is a mix of real time strategy and turn based strategy. The placement of objects and various management elements are real time, so it will be immediately reflected in the game. The attacking in the game is turn based, with a limited number of turns within a set time frame.

Target Audience

The target audiences are those that watch anime with mecha suits, sci-fi fans, and those who enjoy simulations where they manage the environment. The market will be to incorporate a wider niche of those who like mecha suits and want to experience something new and those who like science fiction type of games. Binding it all together is the sim experience where people get to manage the production on another world.

Platform

The platform will be the World Wide Web or on the browser. No other equipment will be required and should be supported on mobile phones also.

Licenses

The game will not try to use any licenses, but the “Gundam” (Mobile Suit Gundam) series might be something to explore if requested. Super Robot Wars (SRW) is another series, but it is already a game series and competes with the Gundam series.

Note:

This section was part of a school assignment and this won’t be followed through. No license will be sought for Mecha Asylum.

Competition Modes

The game will be multiplayer and support cooperative (team) play primarily for competitive modes. The focus must be on the community and while the game must support solo play, it will be frowned down on.

Game Progression

The player starts out with a single mine, a few workers, and a few processing and support structures. The player then waits until enough resources are saved to build new processing structures or upgrade old ones to process the mined materials faster. The player also builds support structures to gain more workers and increase the amount that is mined.

Repeating those steps, the player can slowly build up a good supply and can start an army to gain new territory. Once an army is built the player can attack a region, explore it and set up a mine if the region has resources. The player can keep doing this and mining more resources until the player has a steady supply and can start building bigger structures and finally gain enough territory and resources to build a star port.

Once the player builds a star port, the player can leave the planet and settle on a new planet. When the player lands on the new planet, the player can start over, but with help of the home base, which can send resources. Doing this, the player can start to conquer more territory for higher rank and power.

When the player joins a team, the player can then join forces to attack other teams and devise plans for who attacks who and when. This allows the player to continue more like warring factions and interplanetary battles.

Game World

The game world is a universe with habitable planets scattered around. The player can travel between the planets and mine each one on a hyperspace highway. The planets are of various sizes, but the home planet where all of the players start has no set size and expands with the amount of players. The other planets have a set number of regions that the player can gain or lose (the goal is that the player’s will fight over those planet’s regions while keeping the home planet relatively tame).

The planets each have different terrain, one will be mostly covered with ice, while another will be mostly desert, and the home planet will be a balanced mixed of all of them. This gives the planets different resources that can be mined for the players.

Not every one of the regions on the planets have resources. Keeping regions is good since some of them will have cities, which will supply more workers faster and provide more area for defensive structures.

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Design Document: City Mode

Posted by santosj on March 11, 2005 Comments Off

Focus

The focus of separating the City management is because it will affect the whole game and not just one mode. I also don’t want to divert the focus of the RTS mode away from the player so that they can manage the city options. I want display a lot of options on how the government will work and other parts of the city design and the options for the player.

Beta

I don’t really have a plan for any features because I don’t have a clear plan on what I’m going to include in this mode. I will have to talk about how the Neural Network will work and what will go into that and what options I know the city mode will have. The other options will come as I think of it or when players request the feature. I also plan on opening the source for other programmers to improve or work with.

Conclusion

I’m going to take the city features as they come and just add functionality to either the RTS or RPG mode until the features become more than what the player can manage in either mode. This means that the features won’t be that good until the game matures some more.

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Design Document: Alliance (v2)

Posted by santosj on March 11, 2005 Comments Off

Focus

This mode is where the groups and alliances will be maintained, outside of everything. The purpose of this is to allow the framework to be used in other games. I think by opening the framework to be used by other people will allow the framework to be expaned and improved by other parties and advanced game programmers. If someone improves the database tables or adds a feature, then I can benefit from it also.

Groups

I. Summary

I want groups to be made for the purpose of managing members and the leaders planning for war. The leaders will need to be experienced players but won’t need any special requirements. I envision having a great deal of many groups of various sizes.

II. Creating Groups

  1. Forms

I want information for creating unique groups and giving enough information for players to be able to choose a group that meets their same goals.

  1. Group Name
  2. Story
  3. Background
  4. Goals
  5. Alignment
  6. Rank Names
  1. Requirements for Joining

I think it would help approve the process of joining a group if the player knows exactly what the group leader is looking for. Giving the leader options on what the leader wants to accept will also help with leadership. The group leader won’t be able to set some things because I want everyone to be able to join a group, even low levels.

III. Rules

  1. Official Groups

Groups have to have more than three members to be offical and this number will change to five when the game becomes more popular and gets more members.

  1. Group Limit

I want to limit the group size so that there will be more groups and have some purpose to alliances. If it turns out the game becomes extremely popular, I may raise the limit. The limit is fifteen for now and I think that is enough.

  1. Attacking Restrictions

I want to protect unsuspecting unallied members from being raped when they play the game so I want to restrict the group players from taking advantage from new or single players.

  1. A group may not ever beat down an individual player not in a group unless that member has attacked a member in a group.
  2. A group member may not attack another group unless the group leader has declared war on that group or the group is in the list of enemies.
  3. A group and members may not attack another member or group in the same alliance.

IV. Group Merging

  1. Reasons
  1. Small Groups

If there are two groups that are not large enough to be official then they can merge and take dual ownership of the members.

  1. Group Defeat

If a group is defeated and it was decided that the winner would control the lossing group than merging will occur with the winning leader taking control of the lossing team and the leader of the lossing team lossing ranking under the leader.

  1. Dynamics

This feature would save time if two groups would like to join but don’t want to quit the group just to join the other one. This would be nice to have, but is improbable that any team would use this except maybe once or twice in a year.

V. Vision

  1. Attacking

I would like to see groups go to war and have almost everything automated for them, even records of the group battles. This is one feature that I would enjoy seeing in a lot more games.

  1. Protection

The great bonus about joining a group is protection. If someone attacks the member in the group, then they are attacking the group and war can break loose. This will make the groups think wisely about their actions and choose opponents with caution.

  1. Job Coordination

When I do add jobs to the game, I envision team members taking the role for the group and filling the needs for the group. There will always be a level of trust required from that member but over time it will be decided who is trustworthy and who isn’t. How the group leader coordinates this is up to the leader but whatever job the members have, the options will be available automatically to them.

  1. Exchange of Money

The only resource groups can exchange is money because it is too risky to transport (in game) other resources without the use of a colony to protect and keep everything safe and secure. It will require a banker.

Alliances

I. Summary

Alliances are collections of groups working together under the alliance leader. I also envision alliance large grand scale battles between other alliances. Each group attacking and striking down other groups in the enemy alliance. There will be other benefits in being and having an alliance of groups.

II. Creating Alliances

Creating Alliances will require a colony and at least two groups to be an official alliance. Not much to it really, I suppose it will be almost the same as creating a group, except less information will be required.

III. Vision

I don’t really envision alliances except a greater group with more features available.

  1. Exchange of Resources

Pretty much every resource will be exchangable for the members.

  1. Battles
  1. Inner Alliance

I have decided to allow inner alliance battles to test the might and rank of each group. The group at the top gets to have more control over what happens than the group at the bottom. Not that the members have any say in anything but the leaders at the top rank will have more voting power.

  1. Alliance vs Alliance

The whole point of this first version story line is to have alliances battle alliances and find the top ones. This I think will take a great amount of time and be extremely large scale.

  1. Recording

I think it would be cool to record the actions of the alliances as they attack each other for future reference and for the players to see the details of the grand war.

  1. Fears

I might not want to restrict the movements of the players too much, except during wars where the players have to stick to the guidelines of the leader. My fear is that the game will become a stalement between groups and alliances that don’t or can’t attack each other because the game won’t allow it or they are too scared from dieing. I want the game to be fun and will have to include options to allow open gameplay on top of what the group wars have to offer. Balance is the key and I have to be very careful to keep that in check when I create the game.

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Design Document: RTS (v2)

Posted by santosj on January 24, 2005 Comments Off

I have already wrote some on the RTS features but I want to go into more detail on how the mode will be played. When I started the second alpha of Mecha Asylum, I had in mind a game that would be both RPG and RTS elements from various games that I have played. The plan failed because I couldn’t work the RPG elements in with the RTS and make the game easy to play. Since I have failed at that attempt, I’m going to try to make the game another way and have the elements separate but also affect the other.

Focus

The point of the RTS mode is to have the players just battle it out with massive armies of mecha suits. With this in mind, I don’t want to have extra features that would distract from the main goal. The ranks will depend on total power from the total army amount and other things. The only other thing is that the RTS mode will work with the RPG and world building mode. The old document has some good elements in it and I plan on using them as plans for the game. I just want to reiterate what the player will be able to do and controls that will function in the game.

Each Feature and Section will have an unique purpose that will give the player more to work with and bonuses for having. I will write in more detail what each feature will be and how it will work along with the reason for having it. I also want to explore micro-management that some games feature that allow the player to automate some tasks so that they won’t have to work on every little thing. I think it is annoying to have to do every little thing all of the time when I really want to be doing action. If I want to do the things that I’m managing then I should be able to, or change what the automation does.

Bases

There will be two bases: planet and moon, along with colony. The planet base will focus with defense and if it is destroyed then the player loses the game and has to start over. The moon base will create mecha suits for the player and the more the player has the more mecha suits will be generated in a day. The colonies will provide services and provide the job functions for the player and help with offensive attacks from the sky.

I. Planet Bases

  1. Base
  1. If The Base Is Destroyed

The reason for this is that if the base is destroyed then the player loses the game and has to restart. Restarting means that the player loses everything they had up to that point.

  1. One Planet and One Base

I feel that the focus should only be on one planet. The reason is that there can only be so much the player can do and focus on when there are too many planets. I want everyone in the RTS mode to be together and that didn’t exactly happen in the second alpha so I’m limiting the focus to make the game simplier and I hope, more fun to play.

  1. One Base

The player will start with only one base and can have only one planet base.

  1. Premium Feature

Can have up to three bases and at different locations. Every one needs to be destroyed for the player to be defeated. Different locations in that they can be at different places in case the player who is attacking destroys the home base, there is another to fall back to and rebuild.

  1. Land
  1. Starting Land Amount

The player will start with a number of 10 in 10 slots that will appear on the map.

  1. n00b Class

I want to protect new players from instant death and allow them to learn the game before they are attacked. The only problem is that after they leave the n00b class, they can’t go back into it. So the n00b class needs to be at a level where they player can protect themselves and not be attacked constantly.

  1. Buying Land

The player will be able to buy land from the surrounding areas. It won’t be cheap because I don’t want people to only buy land. It would be boring and I don’t want that. Buying land is just another option for n00b players that can’t quite gain land from attacking.

  1. Capturing Land

It should be stated that, I have always thought that when someone gains land from another player it is transferred to the other players side. Well, that could be in the story or a story but the game dynamics will just substract the land from the enemy and adds it the players side.

  1. Land Defense

There are two types of defense (and perhaps more) for spying and attacks. There will be limits to the amount of stations that can fit on a section of land. Stations can be upgraded to make them smaller and allow more stations to be built on a piece of land.

  1. Maintaining Land

Each piece of land will need to be managed separately so the more land, the harder it would be to managed. I do want to kind of keep the land small for each player but there will be a lot of people who will have a lot of land. For those that will have to much land to be managed, I want to allow them a place to buy bulk stations to be dispersed in each land slot equally.

  1. Mining

Mining will be micro-managed meaning that when new land is discovered, metals will be mined automatically every day. The metals will be recorded and used later for different things. Mainly to produce mecha suits, weapons, and armor. Metals didn’t really have that big of a purpose in the second alpha and I want to change that in this version.

  1. Land Map

I want to show where cities are and how much the player has gained control over. I also want to show if there are any enemies near by the player and the distance from them. No matter how much land a person gets, they will never be anywhere near the other players. The land will be in the form of a circle because it is the easiest way to represent the land mass.

  1. Premium Feature

I want a third defense station that creates a shield over the land and there needs to be at least one station on each piece of land. This defense station defends against colony blasters. It will have a limit on how much it will defend against but it won’t leave the player completely open.

  1. Cities
  1. Population

Population determines how much income the player recieves. The income is dynamic and depends on how the player treats and protects the population. If the player is attacked to often and doesn’t make an effort to protect the cities then the people are going to leave.

The reason for this approach is that it does a better job at giving the player the right amount of money and allow new players to make a good amount of money quickly if they play the game right. Perhaps not but it makes the game fair, unlike Alpha 2 which was kind of skewed.

  1. Start Village

Every player must start with a village to continue making money. There is no way to lose the village as it is next to the base. This is because the player always needs money to play the game. There will also be a minimum amount of population in that city in case all other cities are captured or the population fades away.

  1. Birth and Death Rates

New villagers will be made every night and the cities repopulationed based on death and birth rates. It really depends on the load the script creates on the database and server. May have to work part of the people every hour in the day. It also depends on the setting that the player puts on the cities but that will be managed outside of the RTS mode.

  1. City List

I want to list the cities in the control of the player and give the player stats on the city. The population, the citizen rating, the death and birth rates, and how well the city is protected. I also want to give the position of the city in how far away it is from the base. I want to give indication when a new city will form and how many people are going to be in it. The names of the cities will be totally up to the player because I don’t think there will be too many that they won’t be able to manage the names.

  1. Premium Feature

Since the player is paying to play the game, I want to give the player a break by giving the player more cities. I also want to give the player a easier time to gain population but it won’t be too easy, it will just be a tiny bit better than what normal players get. What it may come to is more characteristics (or less) to make the population more likely to go to that side.

II. Colony

  1. One Colony

I only want the player to have one colony because everything else will just be added to that colony. The colony will cost a great deal of money to buy and after that, each module will cost money.

  1. Privileges
  1. Start Alliance
  2. Buy and Upgrade Modules
  3. Add to Offense with Blasters
  1. Modules

Modules are stations that are added to the colony to add functionality. It would allow me to add more features in one central place for people to find them. The only problem is that for the features, the player will need to buy the colony so I may move some of the features to the planet base or make available for all.

  1. SpyCam

The spycam can be upgraded to help the player to see into enemy territory. It will have a limited amount of power and will interface with sentinals to enhace the information obtained.

  1. Blaster

The blaster can be fired on a piece of land damaging the defenses on that one piece of land. This has to be done before battle and the damage done depends on the level of the blaster and the strength of the defense of the enemy.

  1. Bank

Alliance bank system that allows all the groups in the alliance to use the bank to store their money. There will be a limit to how much each group can store in the bank. The bank will also be accessible to all group leaders and the alliance leader to give to other alliance groups and group members. This doesn’t mean that every can store their money in the bank and can’t lose their money when they are attacked. It won’t work that way but it will allow transfer of money between groups and players.

  1. Weapons Factory

I really just want the mecha to be made complete with weapons and what not but I also think that they should be given weapons of various strengths to enhance their attacking and defensive attributes. If I do fit this in to the RTS mode, it will be automatic depending on the metals the player has also. The player will set the weapons to produce and it will save money for the player.

  1. Storage

Allows holding and transfering of supplies from one player to another through the use of using the Colony as a storage area. The supplies when they are stored inside the storage are immediately deducted from player that sent them. They will be in storage until another player is given permission to recieve the supplies in part or as a whole.

  1. Metals
  2. Mecha
  1. Stations
  1. Purpose

These are mini-colonies that are positioned near the main colony. It gives members in the alliance or group who can’t afford to buy a colony the use of blaster and spycam modules, except weaker than the colony ones.

  1. Market

Anyone can buy one of these to be manufactured and added. The money goes to the owner of the colony and is up to the owner to set the price. The price will have a maximum price and minimum price and will have to cover the inital price of to make the station.

  1. Premium Feature

There will be mining capiabilities out in space for those who wish to have a station set up to mine asteriods. There won’t be a lot of metal amount in the asteriods but it should give a few rare metals for those lucky enough to capture one.

III. Moon

  1. Purpose

The moon base tasks is to create the mecha suits every day. The amount depends on how many bases and how upgraded each of the bases are.

  1. Mecha Creation
  1. Base Armor

When the mecha suits are created they are given no weapons but they are given base armor depending the metals mined. The base armor can’t be changed after the mecha suit is created so it could end up that a beginning player gets luck and finds a strong metal for the base and uses it for such.

  1. Mecha Type Option

The player chooses what type each base will create and will become micro-managed in a queue for the player so that they don’t have to go back and set the type every time. They will be able to change it after the player sets the type and the queue.

  1. Not Enough Resources

If there aren’t enough resources to create the type they want, then the player will have the option of what he wants to do when it happens. The options are going to be to skip the mecha type and go the next one or halt the production of the mecha suit until there is enough metals to create that type. The default option is just to create the basic weak type that doesn’t cost but a few resources that every player will have by default anyway.

  1. Upgrades

Upgrading Moon bases has to be done one by one, so there will be moon bases that are level 0 and on up to level 4. This causes the player to have to pay for each upgrade for each base. The reason for this is that I don’t want the player to just upgrade to level 4 as soon as possible and then start buying new bases.

  1. A moon base creates one (1) mecha suit a day for every base that is created.
  2. Two mecha suits a day.
  3. Three Mecha Suits a day.
  4. Four Mecha Suits a day.
  5. Five Mecha Suits a day.

Market

It would be better if the player could buy all of the mecha they want but I don’t want to have to make the player have to buy the mecha suits all of the time. It would be too much work to have to buy everything, and would cost a lot of money also. I want to focus the market on buying the components to make a functional mecha suit that is as weak or powerful as the player can afford.

I. Weapons

  1. Types

This is a hard one, I have to create a long list of different weapons of various powers for each type of mecha suit. I have a list but it is currently long but too short to be in final. I will eventually add more and more as time goes on and I think of different technology that I can put in the game. Different weapons will also do various things and affect different properties in the game.

  1. Lasers
  2. Rockets
  3. Plasma
  4. Shell
  5. Swords
  1. Restrictions

Different weapons can only be used on specific types of mecha and others can’t be used on some mecha types. This will be detailed in the FAQ when the weapons and rules come out. These details won’t be finalized until after beta and right before the game is finalized.

  1. Scrapping Weapons

If the player doesn’t need a weapon any more they can scrap the parts and gain the metals back from it. They could get some money back from doing so but I will have to tweak the game and see if I should allow that.

II. Armor

  1. Armor “Shells”

Armor is simple enough, there are different “shells” for covering the base mecha armor. These shells can be replaced by better armor. The only problem is that the shells have to use the metals on hand so the player won’t just be able to use the most powerful armor unless they have the metal required to use.

  1. Mecha Body Shop

This is the place where mecha suits go to have their armor added to their base armor. It costs money to use the foundry, so what this amounts to is that the player has to have the metal to get the shell armor and has to pay money have it put on.

III. Metals

  1. Buying

Players will be able to buy metals from the market but at a price set by how many metals there are and the metals worth. If there are a lot of metals, the price will go down but if there are a few metals then the price will be very expensive.

  1. Selling

Every Metal in the market was sold to it at one point or another so if there are no metals, then no one sold that metal to the metals market. A player will be able to gain a profit from selling metals depending on how many metals there already are. The player shouldn’t sell more than they have to use so I will try to lock them to using the minimum metals for production or I may just forget about it and allow the player to make the decision to sell and halt production.

Attacking

I. Player vs Player

  1. Attacking
  1. Mecha Placement

The player will given a grid for mecha placement and then the mecha suits will attack for each round. Each mecha suit has a range of their attack and can only hit so far. The closer the mecha is the more damage the attack is done.The players will have to experiment the best layout for mecha suits or look at the FAQ after it is completed.

  1. Failure

If the enemy was able to move in then the attack failed and the player retreats. If the player loses then they have to give money to the enemy as a fee but no land will be taken or lost. The player will also lose a small percentage of their forces.

  1. Success

After that round what is left will be given and the winner will advance one row. After all the rows have advanced and the enemy has been beaten then the player gets the spoils of war and a percentage of the enemy forces are destroyed.

  1. Amount of Land

The player can only fit so many mecha suits in a field of land so depending on how much land the player wants to attack will limit how many mecha suits the player will be able to go into battle. The player may not be able to attack all of the players land nor will I allow that to happy. There will be a limit to how much land the player can attack so that the player isn’t totally destroyed in one attack.

  1. Premium Feature

I want to allow people who have a paid account to save their attack patterns for later use. This will save some time for the player and allow them to use an attack grid that works for most players. Is this fair? Probably not, but not all grids will work for everyone so it is up to the player. It also saves a lot of time from having to do the same grid over and over again.

  1. Defending

Before any attack on the player takes place, the player will be given a chance to place their mecha in a way so that they can defend their land. I think I will have percentages since the player won’t know how much the player will attack. The player will also be given a grid and options for what to do when they are attacked.

  1. The Grid

The grid will be a total of 8 rows by 5 columns of squares. The player will have the option of placing two or three mecha types in one square and the range the mecha type will attack. Not all squares will need to be used so it could be a guessing game as to whether a square has mecha in it.

  1. Buddy List
  1. Enemies

It seems an enemy and buddy list would be cool to have as I think it would be a great feature in a game where there aren’t very many members. Enemies will show up and the players will be able to attack each other and will have the option of placing and logging everything with that enemy.

  1. Buddies

These are friends that aren’t in the same group and are allies. Either they are friends in real life and want to play together or they met some where and want to play the game together. These people can’t attack each other unless they are in different groups and are told to attack each other. That would be the only way to get around this, even if they are in different groups that are at war.

  1. Restrictions

A new player can’t be attacked until the player has gained enough resources that he would be able to survive an attack. Also players won’t be able to attack players that are far below them. The same is not true for players that are below other players. There will be a range really on attacking. A player can attack as far up as the player thinks he can win but once he does so the player he attacked can attack back. If a player attacks another player during the n00b class then that player moves out of the class and can be attacked from that point on.

  1. Normal Mode of Attack

During this, the player can only have so much of there land and resources taken from them but they can’t be killed. The only way they can be killed is during a special mode during wars and during tournaments.

  1. Attack Points

In order to keep the attacking and all out war to a minimum, I am going to enforce points that are used whenever the player attacks another player. The player will receive these points at intervals of time to spend on attacking. Each attack will use a range of these points. These points could be used for other things, but for right now, they are only going to be used for attacking.

II. Spying

  1. Purpose

Spying is implemented so that the player doesn’t go into battles completely unaware of what the player is facing. This means that the player will be able to see what the enemy has before the player attacks.

  1. Spy Power
  1. Percentage of Information

How much the player actually sees will depend on the differences of spy power for the player and enemy. The player could see everything if the player is too weak or the player could see nothing.

  1. Building Spy Power

Spy power is based off of the colony module and how many sentinal drones the player has. The player has to send the sentinals into the enemies territory and it like attacking except the player can send more in.

  1. Upgrades

Drones intelligence can be upgraded to allow more information to be gathered.

  1. Results

After the results are displayed, they are saved for later use. When the player attacks, the information will be available.

III. War

The war mode has some features to it that I want to make available. What I want from this, is to make it easier to beat down the enemy on both sides. I also want to automate some things to make it easy for the leaders to manage the wars.

  1. Modes
  1. Deathmode

This is where the players can totally kill other players. After the war is over the player has to remake their game and start over. This has to be agreed by both parties or when a group wages war without telling the other group about their plans.

  1. Normal

Same as attacking, except when the player defeats the player, they can’t play until after the war is over.

  1. Rules
  1. Contract of War

Both groups have to agree to attack each other and afterwards they can attack at any time.

  1. Ending the War

The war ends when one side is defeated or one side forfeits the war.

  1. Winning a battle

Players who defeat their enemy will only get the land from the player but not any money, unless they kill the player then all money from the enemy will be handed over. The reason for this is that the player will need any money to rebuild their forces but if they are killed then it wouldn’t matter anyway.

  1. Attack Limit

There will not be an attack limit during the war and so the players will be able to attack a player as many times as they can or want. This allows groups with smaller teams to go against groups that have larger teams. This allow affects the team with the smaller amount of players and not the team with larger amount.

  1. Spoils of War

The winner of wars get a cash prize from the system and get a point towards their ranking.

The points will determine the rank and what groups can fight other groups. Top ranking groups may not be able to fight anyone unless there are a lot of groups and players.

IV. Tournaments

  1. Purpose

Tournaments test the raw skill of players and how fast they can build their game. This could become a mode of play like the RTS and RPG modes but for now, I don’t know what all will make it into the game. For now I’m going to focus on the form of play. The RPG mode will also have this but in a different form.

  1. Rules
  1. Time Limit

I will have to decide on the time, but, for now, the time limit will be one week. That would give enough time to do everything.

  1. Unlimited Play

Attack points won’t be used and the prices for resources will be reduced.

  1. Starting Resources

Players will start with more land, mecha, and will have two cities to start off with. The player will have to start over, no matter what the player has in their normal mode of play.

  1. Free For All

There will not be any group play and there won’t be any allies either. Everyone is the enemy so anyone can attack anyone they want.

Manage

There are quite a few things that will have to be managed elsewhere in the game and this is where they will all go. This page will allow the player to control the options of the game in different areas. Some areas will be controlled in a separate mode and won’t matter if it isn’t controlled here or not. Since I don’t really know where some parts will end up, I will reserve them for here if I can’t place them where I want. It may end up being that I don’t even need this page and that will make me happy.

Status

The status will remain as the place where the player can access to news and the player stats. I feel that I will need to do this page after I am finish with all of the others because this page will work off of all of the others. The point I’m trying to make is that I really don’t know what will make it into this section. I just know this will be the place where the player will get the general idea of what they have and what happened while they were away.

Group

Most of the group and alliance functionality will be placed in a new mode but this page will give a few details about the group the players are in. These are for the basic members, the group and alliance owners will have a separate mode in which to control the aspects of the group or alliance.

  1. Joining a Group

This is done when the player first clicks on the group section. They can’t make a group here, they will have to do that in the Group and Alliance mode. Once they join a group and meet the requirements of the group, then it is up to the leader of that group if the player can join.

  1. Group Member List

I want to have a page that displays all of the members in the group, their rank in the game, and their rank in the group. What the basic member won’t see is the members of other groups but they will see the group names and if given permission can click on the group and see who the members are.

  1. Display
  1. Group Name
  2. Alliance Name (if the group is part of one)
  3. News, announcements, and upcoming wars.
  4. Player Rank
  5. Player Privileges
  1. Wars
  1. War Log

I want to have a page with stats about past wars and who the winners were. Also details about the war so that members can see what worked and what didn’t work. Also plan ahead if they are fighting the same group they had battled before to set up a plan ahead of time.

  1. Player’s War Role

I also want to display the members of the enemies and who the player is assigned to attack. If anyone had gained stats from spying that information will also be available for the players. Also it will display information on enemies who were killed or are beaten to the point where they can’t play until the war is over.

  1. Bonus Functions
  1. Alliance

If the group is in an alliance, then new options will be available for the members of the alliance that will give them new and cool features that is on the colony.

  1. Group

Certain options will be open if the members have the job and are part of the team. Group leaders have to be careful who they accept in their team because there will be some members with double jobs and with different features from that job. If the player has the job then those features will open up but there still needs to be a certain amount of trust from the team to allow that player to control those functions because the player can do whatever he wants.

Conclusion

These features may not seem like much but will take a lot of time to create. Some of the harder ones will take even more time. The roadmap will also need to be updated as the game development progresses. This is just a rough draft and I hope it to be the last alpha version. There may be some more features that I want to add later but I may just add them to the list of features for version 2.0. Given the way the modes are set up, I hope that I won’t need to change every mode to add new features. The only thing that will change is the story so I have that to look forward to. The RTS version is unlikely to change that much from now until the next version but I will take suggestions in beta and after the game has been finalized.

This Mecha RTS game will be different from the others and that is where I think the strengths are with the game. Gamers will find what they like in one game and see if it can be applied to another. If they find a game to hard they may play it but if they find another game that offers the same functionality but is also easier than they may also come to that. The problem is that I can’t afford to give prizes to players but I may do so if I can find enough money and finalize the game. That could also be one of the reasons some games are more popular than others.

Another problem is that I really need to focus on security on the game, so I will most likely have to recode everything in the game in an attempt to improve the security in the game. This will require more time and resources that I don’t have right now. I don’t think we will even get enough members to warrant something like that but if I’m going to offer money or prizes, I’m going to make sure they deserve it.

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Design Document: Modes

Posted by santosj on January 18, 2005 Comments Off

I wrote some on the RTS mode in the first Design Document but I want to reiterate what each mode actually is in case I want to add more. The purpose of the modes is a focus towards one main goal and not try to include everything in the mode. I don’t want to make the same mistakes as I did in the second alpha of the Mecha Asylum game. Another cool thing about each mode is that I want to upgrade to the second version, I can close down a mode and make the upgrades.

The key feature perhaps, is that the RPG mode is going to be dynamic based on the RTS mode. I want the RPG mode to also be separate of the RTS mode meaning that only some parts behind the scenes will affect the RPG mode. The RPG mode will only affect the popularity characteristic and the RTS mode will affect the RPG mode more than the RPG mode will affect the RTS mode.

Well, I should probably explain the dynamic interactions between the RPG and RTS modes. Certain operations will either be done in the modes, the one that makes more sense and fits in with the mode without distracting from the main purpose. If it doesn’t fit then the code will be moved and the adapted inside of that mode.

RPG

The player have one mecha and to experience the dynamic world.

I want the have missions for this mode and allow the player gain the ranks by collecting experience and upgrading their armor. Since the focus is only one mecha suit, I want to have the attacks a little bit different than the RTS mode. Since the players are going to be a little bit more involved in the roleplaying, I want to record the actions the player takes. The players won’t have to roleplay and the mode will offer more game play for those who don’t want to roleplay.

There will be traveling in the land to visit the cities and places that each player has. The players will be able to set up shop and sell items to traveling players. Traveling in hostile territory will have a chance of a random attack depending on the spy and defense. The player won’t be able to travel inside of hostile territory that would otherwise tear the player apart when entering.

RTS

For massive battles of mecha suits against players in an all out war.

A lot of people want to just bash heads with other players and this mode is to allow them to do just that. There won’t be that much else besides gaining armies and battling. Land will be gained here and the bases will be brought in this mode. This mode will have some advanced features towards it that may make it a little more difficult than other RTS games out there but it will be that way so that it fits in the other modes of play.

World Building

I decided to make this a mode since it will be separate from the game and from the other modes. The plan of the game revolves around this mode and so it needs to work independent from the other modes. The other modes (RPG and RTS) will depend on this mode for money and other functions. I have some plans for this mode and some of them are major.

Groups and Alliances

Not really a mode of game play but it will be separate and work with the RTS and RPG modes. Once I make the framework, I can use it in other web applications so I am fairly happy about that after I make it. The groups and alliances will allow players to network with other players and fight as a team. The only deal that I have is that the groups and alliances are in the simplified form are the same thing. I want to set up an admin that allows me to set what actions are for groups and alliances and for shutting down the alliances features.

In the front, the player only joins the group and is added to the table that says he is part of the group. The back is where everything is done and new features can be added or changed. It is also where the team will be managed and so it needs to be modified to where the game can implement the team in attacking, defending, and other features.

Dependence

Key: Mode -> (Depends on) -> Mode

RTS -> World Building
RTS -> Groups

RPG -> World Building
RPG -> Groups

World Building -> RTS

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Mecha Asylum: Design Document 1

Posted by santosj on December 29, 2004 Comments Off

There are going to be two modes of play: RPG and RTS. I decided that the best way to not have to include the whole kitchen sink for those who don’t want it don’t have to have it. I also have decided on creating some premium features that may interest some players for a small price. I don’t feel that charging for something that should be free is a good thing but hey. I’m not going to charge that much for as much time I’m putting in to creating this game. Also, I’m going to allow people to test all of the features before I charge for them. At the most, I’m going to only charge three dollars for a month until I get better graphics and a client side to work off of.


Alliance and Groups

Alpha 2 was a let down because I didn’t have time to implement groups and alliances. I didn’t feel I could implement it and have it work the way I wanted in that version. In this version, I am more clear on what features I want to implement and how they work together.

Groups

1. Creation

Any one can create a group but it has to be unique and there will be a number of forms the leader will have to fill out. The point that everyone can create a group will give way to many groups forming. I also want to have the option to merge groups, if the two leaders agree to merge. If the leaders decide to merge they will have to choose which one will take over the leadership because there can’t be more than one leader for any group or alliance.

2. Merging Groups

Groups can merge if they don’t have enough members on their own to be official or if one group defeats another group and decides to own that group. If one group has a hostile take over then the members in that group belong to the group that beat them and they can’t leave for a certain amount of time.

3. Group Vision

What I envision the group purpose to be is just for attacking, protection, and group wars. That will be all there is to groups and there won’t be any free exchange of money, mecha suits, and metals. If members want to exchange materials then they will have to pay money and commission to do so.

4. Job Coordination

What I will allow in the group is the free exchange of job services to other group members. That means if there is a banker then he can be the banker and store the money for the group and exchange the money for free. The same for the other job services and this will be the only exception. This will set up a queue and restriction for members and supply verses demand.

A group may have a lot of merchants but may want a banker but there may not be any banker available so they either have to find a independent banker or use a banker in another group and pray that they don’t become enemies. In my vision, I see a lot of mixed and matched job services in all groups with those that have an abundance of one type to take advantage of other groups.

5. Official Group Amount

This is likely to change in the game as the game grows and starts out but the minimum will be 3 in the early stages and will immediately jump to 5 and then 10 when the game grows large enough. If enough people complain then I will lower the amount to no less than 5 and the amount will be no higher than 20, if the game ever grows that large (which I doubt).

6. Group restrictions

  • A group may not ever beat down an individual player not in a group unless that member has attacked a member in a group.
  • A group member may not attack another group unless the group leader has declared war on that group or the group is in the list of enemies.
  • A group and members may not attack another member or group in the same alliance.

Alliances

1. What is an Alliance?

Where as a group is a pact formed by members of players, an alliance is a pact of groups by group leaders with the alliance leader. This means that a regular player can not join an alliance and will have to join a group in an alliance.

2. What is allowed?

The free exchanged of services and items between groups and coordination of groups to attack other alliances. The alliance has more control of the groups but not the members of the groups. I also want to allow inter-alliance group battles if the alliance leader agrees to it first and sets the option for such an event to occur.

3. My Vision

My vision is to have all of the alliances that come up to battle it out until there are only two or three alliances left and have them as the story for the next version of the game when I add more features and update the story. In nature the relationship will be relatively simple except in the attacking field, where it will be really complex and will require a lot of rules and checking on my part to make sure everything works smoothly. I also have to create a lot of options for the group and alliance leaders so that they can maintain and control everything easily.

4. What I Fear

That it will become a stalemate with no one attacking each other because they are either allied or because the other alliance is more powerful. I want battles to be able to take place but I also want restrictions so that a newbie doesn’t get gang raped as soon as the player starts. I will have to balance the action and controls out carefully in the alpha stage and more so in the beta.

RTS Mode

This is the first mode I’m going to create and finish because it is like the second alpha. I figure many people are going to be just interested in all out war with a few friends so this mode will give them what they want. The main story is that you are trapped on a planet and trying to survive. The main focus is protecting the players base. I want to do a sort of map version like in alpha 2 but couldn’t because of time involved. I want to have the player fight through the land and protections to get to the base. It would make it really hard and that is good. It will simplify a lot of things for the game.

I want my game to be different from the other games. They have special things that make them great but I want mine to be great for a different reason. Feature focus will be based on map based attacking and this is where I want to add some premium features for the RTS mode.

Base Design

1. One Planet for attacking and maintaining.

I feel that there is to much to do and if I have one planet then people will focus more on macro managing what they have on that one planet and not have to manage every planet.

2. One Base

For premium feature, I may allow the player to put up to 2 bases but in different spots so that the player will be harder to completely destroy. For other players, I think the main focus should be offense and defense for the bases so the player will have to be able to defend the player with everything his has. This will require me to restrict the players into classes and levels and only allow players in a range of attack. That is, for the noob players, after that they are on their own. Once they get out of Noob class and join the elite ranks, I’m not going to protect them and they can be able to be destroyed, if the player isn’t careful.

3. Capturing and Buying Land

Buying land is going to be a high price to pay but players will be able to capture land and depending on the amount they want to capture, they may find it extremely hard to come by.

4. Maintaining Land

The player will have the choice of setting up a wall and depending on the perimeter size, it could cost a lot. When the player gets more land then they will have to fill in the spots that are missing walls. The enemy could spot the holes and get through that way.

The player will also have to buy defensive terrets and bunkers for each piece of land they have. They can either have a small amount of land and many terrets and bunkers or a large amount of land and a small amount of terrets and bunkers. There will be a limit to how many mecha suits can attack one piece of land and how many terrets and bunkers can occupy land.

5. Cities

I want to implement a city and popularity sim type sub game inside. I don’t know exactly how I’m going to do this but it could be pretty complex and I may not even finish it in time to put it in this version. I may have it in the next version. The point of having cities and people is that it draws in taxes and that gives the player income for buying new mecha suits. Every player starts out with a village to produce income for new players.

New sims will be created each night and will go to each village based on characteristics and the sims mood. The sim won’t have any other function besides income and will mostly want protection and that will depend on the players settings for protecting his cities and villagers. The player will also have an amount of fear that will keep villagers inside the country and there will also be death and birth rate that could grow a village with many people or destroy it if no villagers are coming in and the death rate is higher than the birth.

I will have more customizable features in the RPG mode than the RTS because I don’t want people to worry about managing the sims. The only settings they will be able to set are protection or fear. Some sims may like the fear, if they are protected enough. Another setting will be spending money on news and vacation spots. I will have to think more about this when I implement it. It will most likely expand to a new post.

6. Purpose of the Base.

Mining and commanding the mecha suits. The base is required to be in the game and once it is destroyed the player loses and has to start over. Mining depends on the land and there will be different materials at different locations. The metals will be random with some rarer than others and therefore won’t be as accessible as the lesser metals. Metals are used to produce mecha suits and more power metals equals better and more powerful suits.

Colony Design

1. Maximum Colony Amount

Like the planet base, I want the player to only have one colony because it wouldn’t benefit the player to have more than one. Having a colony allows the player to start an alliance and coordinate groups that are inside that alliance. Inside the colony will be different modules that the player either has to activate or buy and more modules will be added as the game progresses and the need comes up.

2. Blaster Module

All colonies start out with this module but it is at level 1, which isn’t very powerful. The player can pay money to upgrade the level to max out the damage done by the blaster cannon. The blaster cannon can help with an attack on a section of land to either weaken it before the army goes in or after an attack has occured. The blaster cannon won’t fire on the player’s armies if they are inside a section.

3. Spycam Module

The spycam allows the player to see what a section of land has, the limitation is that it can only see so far. The enemy may have installed protections to hide what a section of land has. Upgrades to the spycam allow the player to see more land and beat the spy defenses the enemy may have set up. What I won’t allow is the player to see more than 90% of the enemies land no matter how weak the player is. What I mean is that there will allows be a section of land that will always be hidden away from the player by the base. It is the sections outside of that perimeter that will need to be protected.

4. Bank Module

Alliance bank system that allows all the groups in the alliance to use the bank to store their money. There will be a limit to how much each group can store in the bank. The bank will also be accessible to all group leaders and the alliance leader to give to other alliance groups and group members.

5. Metal Storage

Similar to the bank but this allows the storage of any number of metals in the alliance so that if one member has the ability to mine a special type of metal then the other members can (either pay or) use the metal. I will have to set up some options for the leaders so that they can control the distribution of metals and not have all the members go crazy with all the metals.

6. Mecha Factory Module

One of the benefits of having a colony is producing Mecha suits from metals mined on the planet free of charge and done as much as the Alliance member has the materials to create mecha suits. It feature is available to everyone in the alliance but I may allow permissions to be set up for alliance and group leaders that want to revoke the use for punishment of some kind (I may give this feature to as a premium feature).

7. Stations

These are smaller, cheaper versions of colonies that only include the blaster and spycam functions that anyone can buy that belongs in an alliance. It floats around the colony and can’t be destroyed by any means.

8. Others

It depends on the players needs, I may add the feature here if it is something big and should require a colony to preform and would benefit an alliance better. The colony is good for the player but it also allows a lot of cool stuff for alliance and groups so I will have to make the decision on whether I want just the player to use the feature or if I want to allow everyone in the alliance to use the feature. There will be more modules as the game progresses so I have to make room in the design for them.

Moon Base Design

1. Purpose

Each player starts out with one moon base and each moon base creates a mecha suit each day. The Mecha produced is just a shell and needs parts to be brought from the market to be useful in battle and defense.

2. Upgrading

Since the price of buying a moon base is high, I will allow the player to upgrade the base to produce between 3 to 5 maximum mecha suits a day for each base. What this means that the player will have to upgrade each base individually to produce more than one mecha suit for each moon base.

3. Options

The moon base allows the player to pick a type of mecha suit to create with some of the more powerful types costing a little extra to produce.

4. Purchasing Moon Bases

The player will be able to buy new Moon bases and there will be no limit to the amount of moon bases a player can have. Probably have it on the same page as maintaining the moon bases.

Market

Mecha

The player won’t be able to buy mecha suits in the RTS mode and the RPG mode so this won’t be in the market at all. I have decided that this is one of the problems with the second alpha and won’t be included in later versions.

Weapon

Each Mecha will require a weapon with some types fitting certain types of mechas. The power of the weapon will depend on the metal used to make the weapon and metal the ammo is using. I will have to determine the pricing for the weapons depending on the factors listed.

Armor

Each Mecha will also require armor and will be fitted when they go into battle. There won’t be a special armor fitted for each mecha type so one size fits all approach will be applied. It isn’t cost effective to otherwise.

Metals

I want for players to be sell and buy metals in an exchange market where the amount of metals available depends on the amount that people sell and the price goes is dynamic to the amount of metals.

Land

Layout

I want to show the player how much the player has taken over and show the cities position in the players land. It will be a graphic, poorly designed but it will function fairly well for it purpose. I also don’t think the player will care all that much how the graphic looks like.

Cities List

I also want to list the cities, the names (allow the player to name the cities), the position, and the size of the city. In more detail I want to show the popularity and how much money the city is taking in. I also want to give an indication on how well the city is protected against attack and how the people feel about their ruler.

Managing Land

I want to allow the player to click on a section of land and buy buildings that will protect it against attack and help keep the spies and spycam out. It won’t be on the map but on a separate page that lists the sections and how many buildings are in each section.

Limitations

The player will start with large sections and will eventually fill up the space allocated for the player. The player will then have to upgrade the map to make the sections smaller so that the player can get more land. I may make the process automatic and allow the player to see just around his base and zoom in and out. I will have to see what features I can put into the map and decide where I can go from there. I may make some features premium, if they end up being too difficult and time consuming.

Attacking

The player can gain land by one of two ways: attacking land near the player or attacking another player. If a piece of land that belonged to a player holds a city then the player gains control of that city and it is added to the players list. The citizens gain a fear factor bonus for a short time that effects the birth and death ratio depending on how the player handles the citizens of the captured city.

Attacking Land

Attacking land won’t be so easy because a player can only send so many mecha suits to battle for a piece of land. The inhabitants don’t take to kindly to someone attacking and trying to take their land. The defensive for land is random so it may be the hardest ever and won’t happen or it will be fairly easy. The only thing is, is that with more land the player owns the harder it will be to attack to get more land. The defensive will always be within the range of the attacker with random values plugged in on whether the attack succeed or failed.

To attack land, the player just specifies how much land the player wants to take on at once. The larger the amount the more difficult it is going to be.

Attacking Player

There are restrictions on who the player can attack and they are listed above in the group and alliance section. If the player can attack the other then they have to specify an amount of land to attack and then the calculations will be determined by the defensive rating on that section of land and the mecha stationed in that area and the amount of different mecha the player is sending in. The player will be able to place the mecha suits in formation or use a saved formation for the piece of land.

When the player takes the base, then the player takes control of what is left of the mecha suits, the money, moon bases, and the colony, if there was one self destructs. Reason is that it will cost a lot of money to buy a colony and I don’t want someone who saved for a long time at the expense of not building defensive to lose all of that hard work because someone got “lucky.”

Spying

I want to implement this better in this version and allow the colony (if there is one) or station to use the spycam to help the sentinals to seek out the stats of a piece of land. If the spy succeeded then the information will be recorded for the player and they can make a decision on whether to attack or not. Depending on the strength of the spying, the enemy may or may not find out who the person is. The only option that will be available will be espionage and the strength of it will give more or less details about a section of land.

Story

The story will tie into the RPG one but this one will be on a new planet and have a different goal in mind for the players. There won’t be any missions to complete and this mode will only be about focusing on taking over as much land and gain power over the other groups and alliances as possible. The alliances that win in this part of the game will carry over in the next version. People will have to join the alliances based on here.

Conclusion

There are some factors that have made me conclude that I may keep this version of the game running as long as possible and side by side with the next version. The reason is that since the next version will be based off this version, it won’t have some features in this version that will be in the next one. I may still support this version and add features to it long after I complete and start the second version of Mecha Asylum universe.

There are some details not listed in this design document and the reason is that this document is about the pages and options that will be available to the player and unique to this mode. Jobs and mecha types will be discussed in a later post. I now have a roadmap for the Mecha Asylum Alpha 3 version to go off of for the RTS version.

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Dragonball: Design Document

Posted by santosj on December 29, 2004 Comments Off

I had wanted to complete a lot more in this first version but I’m not going to do that now. I’m just going to put together a simple attack and defend style game that allows you to battle the enemies from the Dragonball universe and have powers and items from the same universe.

This alone will take a couple of months to complete and I will also have to create tools to go with it so that it is easy to add more items and enemies. One thing that I wanted to add but won’t have the time to start or finish is: missions and the cool story line. Once I complete these first scripts and sections I’m going to fix the bugs, go into beta form for the players and fix more of the bugs and then finalize the version. The second version is what will include the missions and new storyline.

Engine Core

Since I have a limited time and don’t wish to spend the time writing all new code I’m going to use the Dragon Knight Game Engine as the core. I’m going rewrite all of the scripts and make them work with my Absidon Games site but the overall design will be based off the DK game engine. I am also going to add some more features and rework some of the design so that it doesn’t suck. I took a look at the scripts and I’m not pleased with the design of them. I also plan on adding a few more features that aren’t included in the game engine: PvP and perhaps Missions.

The game engine includes:

  1. Town Support
  2. Market
  3. Attacking
  4. Status and level
  5. Map Support
  6. Spell Support
  7. Traveling and Random Battles

Sections

* Status Page
* Store
* Space Port
* Training Center
* Attack
* Group
* Missions

Status Page

I want to show the stats of the character and list the attacks and attack points. Also list some news and news from the group the the player is part of.

Market

The market is going to work of the DK game engine and I’m only going to add support for new items and change the page displays. Also add support for new weapons and changes that are unforeseen.

Training Center

Something not in the Game Engine and you have to fight to gain new skills and experience. The Training room will increase skills and what not but there will be limitations and once the player enters they can’t do anything until the training is finished. There will also be a limit to how many times a player can train in a room.

Spirit Room: This is in the series and seems like the most logical addition to the list since it was used a lot in the series.

Gravity Room: Also in the series and I want to add this because it adds a new dimension to training and will test the different attributes of the characters.

Virtual Space Room: the next generation training room that will allow the player to fight against a number of enemies at the same time and battle each of them.

Space Port

The space port allows the player to travel to different planets with their own ship or use the game space travel ship for a price and extra time. The space port also alones the player to fill up on energy to get to the destination. Certain ships allow training to be done in the ship so that the player can do something while they wait.

Group

I want to allow players to join a group and allow group battles against a team of enemies. It will also allow the team to use the same ship to get around and put each others money together to buy some big things. I think it would be extremely interesting to have this in the game and then expand on it later on with missions that can only be done with a group.

Attack

Tournament

These battles I want to create to allow two players to test their skills against each other, no matter the alignment. It will take a little longer because each player has to wait for the other player to respond to the enemy attack before they can go on. It could take a while but that is the main point of the tournament, it takes a lot of involvement on the players part to coordinate the attacks and what not.

The winner also gets a lot of money from winning and some other things that I have yet to decide.

Player vs Player

This depends on alignment and if a good player attacks another good player then the player can risk turning evil from the feedback. I want to allow players to pick defense attacks for when another player attacks them. The player can gain experience and money from the player if they succeed in their attack.

Player vs Bad Guy

This is much like the training room except the player can die. A lot more experience points and money is taken from this battle mode than the others.

Missions

Missions are self contained, meaning that the player has a set of goals that accomplished inside of the mission page so there is no need to go outside of the mission page. Any goals set will be saved for when the player returns to the mission page. The only exception is for missions that take place on a certain planet, the player will either have to go to that planet and wait for further instructions or they have to travel to a city and talk to a NPC.

There are some missions that will be hard coded and will take time to create but others will be available without a storyline and give a certain amount of experience points for completing.

* Search for Dragonballs
* Defeat a number of enemies
* Job related

Hard coded Missions are ones that will take the most time to create and will follow a storyline with a number of sagas and new enemies to defeat. I still have to write up the story and sagas and create the enemies. Look for this in version two.

Jobs

Jobs determine what you extra tasks you can do within the game world. There will be missions for each job and allow the player to do special things. I will have to decide what the tasks and items recieved are, most likely will take it from player suggestions.

* Merchant
* Warrior
* Healer
* Planet Guardian
* Assassian
* Rogue

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