For anyone who happens to stumble across this blog . . .

This blog, as has been stated before, will no longer be active.  I have moved here:

renaxs.blogspot.com

That's now my permanent blog.

Hope to see you there!  :)

A Change of Plan

As you may or may not be able to tell, everything on this blog has been eviscerated. Do not fear, for I am not putting down my keyboard just yet. After a few weeks of hair-pulling, face-smashing, and head banging, I have come to the conclusion that I cannot 2D game-make.

One night as I was trying to fall asleep, I realized that I did not have to screw around with it. So, I have dropped Pop! for now and gone with an RPG of sorts. Not gonna say anything yet, but there'll be one more blog post - the last of this blog, most likely - with the link to the fancy new blog with the fancy new game and the fancy new newness.

Oh, and, I'll also be working with someone else on this, so things will get done half as fast. No, that's not a typo. :) Just kidding, when we get into the flow of things, it'll be some pretty quick rolling.

That's it for now. Hopefully I haven't left anyone biting their nails. No, wait. Hopefully, I have. I love cliff hanging people.

Dungeons

Dungeons . . . gonna be probably the most interesting feature to make in the game.

They will be randomly generated, randomly placed, and temporary. New ones will pop up, old ones will vanish. Each will be unique.

Dungeons will be accessible via portals in the ground. You will be transported to a randomly generated dungeon, of which there will be four levels: Abyssinian Prince dungeons, Abyssinian Lord dungeons, Abyssinian King dungeons, and the extremely rare Abyssinian Overlord dungeons. Each is more difficult than the last, obviously, and each will garner more rewards than the last - obviously.

When you get into the dungeon, your first priority is to find the treasury, where all the cool stuff is. Once you find it, you have to kill the Prince/Lord/King/Overlord to retrieve his key, which you can then use to unlock the treasury. See what I did there? No way of avoiding a big boss fight when you go down to a dungeon.

Why go to a dungeon? There will be armor, abilities, spells, and weapons that are only - ONLY - found in dungeons. And trust me, they'll definitely be worth it.

How big will the dungeons be? That's my biggest question right now. Obviously, the more difficult the dungeon, the bigger and more hostilely-populated it'll be, but how big will they be? . . . I'll have to think on that. Gotta be big enough so it's a challenge, but small enough so you don't get eternally lost in its depths.

Ah, well. The game hasn't even started development - what am I worried about? :D Let's put all the technical details in the hands of FutureMe and worry about the fun stuff - while I still can. Ammarite, other indie developers?

On my agenda while I wait for my book and a new hard drive: Moar posts! Although, I probably won't need to post anything here for a while . . . I've kinda crammed my fist into your throat, dear reader, with my slew of posts in the past few days. I'll just be working on the blog itself, improving even more than the very recent overhaul. But most of you haven't had the misfortune to see my original blog . . . ha hah . . . just laugh, and you'll get an idea of what it looked like.

Global Traffic?

Edit:  Okay, I have no idea what the heck just happened.  This post just suddenly got bumped up to the top.  It's supposed to be with the other two posts about combat . . . No idea what happened there.


Well, that's interesting. Evidently, people from the UK, Australia, Germany, and Croatia have visited this blog . . . neat.

Don't know why I titled it that, since I only wrote two sentences about it. It really should be titled "Magic System."


I am going to make three posts today (Probably), each detailing what I plan on doing with the combat of Pop!. There will be three types of combat: Ranged, melee, and magic. They're diverse, and need no explanation. This one is about what I plan on doing with the magic system.


I want to do a bunch of trees, and that will be my ultimate goal. So here's the outline: There will be many "types" of magic - fire, ice, water, earth, air, mind, illusion, dimensional etc. Actually, that'll probably be it. Right there.


Each magic type will have three trees to it (I hope for them all to be very diverse and with a healthy amout of spells): Attack, defense, and other. Attack spells will, obviously, deal damage and maybe some other side effects - stun, knockout, freeze, snare, etc. - to their target. Some will have to be aimed, some all you'll have to do is tap on the target to select them and then use the spell. Defense spells need no target; it's always you (Although when it comes to multiplayer later on, I'll have to add a new magic category - healing - and make it so that you can give defensive spells to teammates), so all you need to do is use them. "Other" spells will be spells not really related to attack or defense - like traps or hindrances.

Each spell will be able to be indefinitely upgraded - each time you add a point to it, it'll just be boosted x% or something - so that you CAN have your favorite spell from the beginning of the game to the end.

The spell "trees" will be actually more like spell "grids" where, probably for the most part, there won't be any requirements for spells except experience, so you won't have to get a bunch of random spells you'll never use to get to your preferred one.



Again: Viewers from around the globe, I want your comments! Give me your suggestions, criticisms, and even insults! I can take it! :)

Storyline/Game progression

So, you already know the gist of the storyline. Before your character was born, the Fire and Ice dimensions were in a raging conflict over nothing; Fire just wanted to fight, and the Ice dimension was closest. As the Sky dimension watched the war go on, the Jungle dimension, filled with a simple folk who were both fierce warriors and did not want to fight, was taken over by the Abyss dimension, using the Fire-Ice war as a distraction to slip in unnoticed. As the last of the Jungle people took refuge in the Sky dimension, far away from their own dimension, the Abyss dimension wasted no time, taking over the Ice then Fire dimensions in quick succession. As the refugees took shelter in the Sky dimension, both the Abyssinian and Sky councils prepared for the inevitable Abyssinian assault. The Abyss Master, a being of pure evil, readied his armies for the final assault on the last dimension to total domination, but the Sky people, very wise, destroyed all the portals to the other dimensions, and the Abyssinians were halted without even being able to fight.

Your character is born after the war, into a simple farming family. You are summoned by the Sky Council because of your rare ability: You are a Jumper, allowing you to Pop between dimensions at will - without a portal. The Sky Council realizes how valuable you are to them; if trained, you would be able to Pop to the Fire dimension, do a few hit-and-run attacks, and Pop back. You would even be able to spearhead full-on assaults to take back the dimensions.



To progress in the game, instead of levels, there are "regions." Regions are small-ish chunks of land in a certain dimension, of which there will be ten per dimension. Ten regions a dimension, five dimensions, that's . . . hang on . . . fifty regions total. Needless to say, I'll be working on those regions for a while . . .

But the thing about regions, is that you gotta keep an eye on them, or they'll be taken back. I'm going to make it so that you have to destroy the portals on each region as well, as the Sky Council ruled that all inter-dimensional portals be destroyed, so as to prevent something like what happened from happening again. So there will be two main goals in the game: Destroy all the portals, and take back all the dimensions. After you've done so, you have to face and kill the Abyss Master - and then you've beaten the game!