Negotiations

Lets talk about Negotiations.

One of the more difficult ideas to put together is a fun and enjoyable way to implement a negotiation system for acquiring souls and other items from enemies without having to fight them.  Considering I want to use the negotiation system as the sole way of acquiring souls, I want it to be robust.

This becomes complicated because there are few negotiation systems I can look to for guidance.  The most comparable game, the Shin Megami games, have relatively poor systems.  You have to guess the answers to demons' questions, and hope to god they're not fickle and leave you with nothing.  This may be on theme for those games, but it definitely is frustrating.  My plan is to take a cue from Alpha Protocol's conversation system, specifically the level of detail and flow charts that they use, and combine that with the simple Q&A format used in SMT.

For example, each demon (not the individual demon, but the family of demons, such as "goblin") will have a personality.  This personality will guide what questions the demon will ask, and the flowchart of what questions will follow based on each answer you provide.  Some demons will ask the same questions as others, but each personality will dictate what the optimum answer is.  The demons will ask about five questions, give or take, before asking you what you want from them.  Based on the answers you provided up to this point, the demon will either agree, or tell you to shove off. 

I plan on giving out "Negotiation Points" for each answer provided, and at the end, when you go to ask the demon for something in particular, a bar will show you how many points you needed in order to have a shot at the demon acquiescing.  Certain answers will be worth many points, some few points, and some will subtract points.  It will be some trial and error, but once you learn how to deal with a certain demon, it should be relatively simple.  I also plan on adding a few sub personalities to each demon family, if possible, in order to keep things interesting for a longer period of time.

A Welcoming Introduction

Hello, and welcome to my development blog for the game Shades of Grey. 



This blog's purpose to help me keep track of my development ideas, progress, and receive feedback from you and the rest of the Internet on my first foray into the world of game development.  My goal is to create a compelling game not just through my vision of what the game ought to be, but also what you, the players, will want to play.  This begs some few obvious questions.

So who am I?  My name's Kyle and I am a second year law student (as of the time of this post) at the Benjamin N. Cardozo school of law in NYC. 

So you're studying to be a lawyer, and trying to develop video games.  I don't see the connection.

While being in graduate school is time consuming, I have always wanted to develop my own game, and there's no time like the present to finally sit down and make it happen.  Perhaps one day I can make money from one of these professions to subsidize the other...

So what is Shades of Grey?

Shades of Grey is the working title of a RPG in the vein of Wizardry, Etrian Odyssey, or Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (just to name a few influential games).  The characters will traverse areas from a first person perspective, fight groups of enemies in turn based combat, and use the souls of enemies they negotiate with to create equipment to fight bigger and stronger foes. 

Why such an old school game/RPG?

This is for two reasons:  The first is that I am a big fan of the turn based RPG and feel they do not receive enough love in the modern market place.  Second is that my programing skills are 0 and creating game play systems for a turn based game is easier on the programing and cheapens art costs.  The soul of the game will be in the fighting, story and crafting, not the graphics, and that's fine with me.

Wait...no programing experience?  How are you going to make this?

I'm dodging that issue as long as possible, but I figure I'll either partner up with some programmers down the road, once most of the game is properly conceptualized and reduced to formulas, or I'll teach myself by the time I need it.  Nothing going on here is going to be a difficult programing challenge, at least I hope not.  Instead, the creativity of the systems is going to be the key.

So why am I reading this blog then?

You readers will have the ability to help shape the game as I develop it.  I have plenty of  game play ideas, but I am often my own best echo chamber, and sometimes bad ideas start sounding good.  By sounding ideas off of you readers, I can work smarter, not harder, and create something that is not only fun for me, but also for you.  Additionally, how many opportunities do you have to try to discuss the intricacies of how an ex-con should attempt to fight legions of demons?  Not often I bet.

What platform will this one day be on?

PC.  My goal is to get this onto Steam.

So come join the discussions and I hope to see your comments out in the field.