Game Maker - Research

Research:

Genre: Point and Click Role Playing Game

Games Researched:

1.       The Pride of Taern – Point and click MMORPG, third person active-turn based.

Figure 1 - Turn based combat

The Pride of Taern is a game I played last year, and it got me hooked on turned based RPGs again in a long time.

The gameplay is as follows: you control your player character from an isometric view and walk around the game map. When you mouse over another character, be it NPC, enemy, or another player, a coloured outline appears around the character.  If you click on a NPC, you initiate a conversation with them from a first person view point. Different dialog and quest options then display to the right side of the screen. I grew fond of this mechanic, as well as the character outlining, and have decided to implement some form of this feature into my game.

The combat is active turn based with a set time. Although I would like to also include this feature into my game, I fear the programming needed to implement such as feat would drain up too much development time.

Figure 2 - First Person Conversations 

2.       Runescape

Good old Runescape, the first MMORPG I’ve ever played since I was little. The major feature of this game that stood out for me was the vast amount of activities other than combat that could be done to progress your character, features such as fishing, wood chopping, mining, cooking, smithing etc.

I want to create an RPG that has more than just the usual mob grinding, and more goals than just simply levelling up your hero without adding in too many features that I won’t have the time to complete. For that idea to work, my RPG will need a specific goal that is not “Get to level XX” or “Defeat the final boss”. Perhaps by acquiring certain items, like on a scavenger hunt while encountering enemies along the way, or a race against time to complete a certain objective.

Figure 3 - Runescape gameplay

Figure 4 - Runescape inventory system

Another small feature I like about Runescape is the inventory layout and art style, as it allows easy reference to your inventory, yet still provide adequate information by simply mousing over the item.

3.       Fallout 3

One of my all-time favourite RPGs, Fallout 3’s most stand out features are it’s sandbox gameplay, V.A.T.S, perks, and dialog options. The features I would like to implement in some form are the sandbox nature of the RPG, and the dialog options, notably the “Speech” options in game which allows special conversation options if your Speech level is high enough. The sandbox gameplay gives a big sense of freedom and control to the player, which would be mostly absent in a mostly linear “Point A to point B” RPG. The speech option also encourages a non-combat form of skill increase, adding diversity to the game.

Figure 5 - Fallout 3 dialog options