I've spent the last week working on the engine and technical details, such as I decided to move from native resolution of 320x240 (4:3 ratio) to 428x240 (16:9 ratio) among many more things.
But this weeks blog is about gameplay and setting. I have decided to set the game in a fictional ancient Greece where mythology has come alive. A sort of merge between the Heroic Age in Greek Mythology and classical Greece, but I will not be concerned with correctness in either mythology or history. I like the Greek setting, as I feel it's a bit ignored in video games and it should suite a roguelike fairly well.
I plan on developing the game in two major versions. Version 1 will be an adaption of the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, where you, as a hero of your choice, delve deep into a dungeon until you find the labyrinth that contains the Minotaur that must be slain. This is more or less a traditional roguelike game.
Version 2 will include a world map of ancient Greece (mostly southern Greece, and the peninsula of Peloponnese) with a few Poleis who have their own politics and interactions. In this version the player will be a Greek who is set out to become a hero. Upon his death he is judged by his fellow Greeks of his great deeds he has done to see if he is worthy of being raised to the demigod status of Hero, having a monument erect and being worshiped by a cult. Now if you remember, I plan on the world being consistent. I will still have permanent death, but on death the world is not destroyed, you just create a new character where the world left off.
On gameplay, currently the game is real-time but every action in the game takes a set amount of time (turns) to perform. I should be able to fairly easily transform the game into effectively a turn-based game by pausing every time the player has no current action. I will most likely have that as an option.
My motto for gameplay is keep it simple. There will only be four attributes: Strength, Toughness, Dexterity and Intelligence. You get to raise an attribute by one every level. Also every third time you gain a level you will be allowed to select a talent. Talents are a variety of special abilities that favour your character, such as a bonus with melee weapons or faster healing. And finally skills, skills are only things that perform some sort of action upon the character, world or another object. They gain experience through use (but experience is also contributed to the overall character experience). Most skills in Version 1 will be combat, but I would like to eventually include some crafting and survival skills like Smithing and Stealth.
That is all for this week, hope you enjoyed.
