Game of Rath - cooking a RPG!

Greetings Adventurers! 

In this dev log post, I'll go through some prehistory of this project, how it came to be, why, what  there is to be expected in the future.

Ancient History as told by the Scribes

Around 2 years ago when generative AI was starting to catch wind in professional game development circles, I was working in a small startup, and while doing the "day work" as Unity developer, I started to experiment with AI assisted game development. 

During Xmas break I whipped up an text based RPG game, boldly named as Text Adventure. Using ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion I created a working game prototype in few weeks: dialogue system, inventory, quest system, quest log, very basic combat. Built with Unity3d it was a mobile game, for Android platform (to start with). It was great success! Well sort of  - I showed it to my  work collaques, they liked it.

But I was not happy with the combat part of the game - it was a text based combat, very simple and quite boring to be honest. Then the Xmas break was over, and I went back to work and the project got put into the backlog, among dozens of  quick concepts and  some more ambitious endeavors with  hard to fix flaws... sob....

Rebirth of the Adventure!

Then lets  fast forward to this year. Wibe coding is the word of the day, and gen AI abilities in code generation are soaring. A single (brave) individual can now create a whole game - decent game with some depth - as a side job / hobby. 

Yes, it has always been so that a  single able person can make a great game with depth and beauty - early Ultima games, Minecraft, you name it. But now the dedication does not need to be 1000%  - you can make complex games faster, or make them  part time, without spending several years in the process.

So now I have this  quite nice idea of a card battler mechanic - Cards have two values, primary, like attack, and the booster value to boost other cards... could it work for the Text Adventure game?

Well thats for me to find out! I now have the basic  combat gameplay system set up in Game of Rath, next I will "rip off" the previous game projects core systems - Quest system and Dialogue  -, and plug it into the Rath... might be easy, might be hard. Probably something in between.

The Plot!

So the game flow will be like a traditional single player RPG game: you start with a  thin backstory, some low end items (cards in this case), got to a town, get a task to chase rats ( to play round of Rath with local tavern dweller ), get some gold coins and  better items, get some quests, go out in the world, adventure, hoard stuff, die occasionally (not sure how that works in this game...yet) meet love of you life (well ummm... maybe), face the ultimate baddie trying to take over the world... you know. The plot. 

Maps!

I love game maps, as well as  maps in books - needless to mention J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth maps in Lord of the Rings, I have spent more hours studying them than most have spent wasting their youth in smoky backrooms playing billiards with shady characters. 

So naturally we need a Map System, showing locations, tracking progress, heightening the feel of "being there" and arousing  intrigue of the yet unseen...

World map will look something like this:

Found locations like towns, ruins, taverns will show up as icons, and player can freely jump between them - on same island. To travel to another island, you need to talk to Harbor masters. Long distance voyages will take you to another map sheet.

Having maps set like this will make expanding world easy -at any given time I can add another map like the above, add some sea routes to edge of the map and all looks natural and there is no problems with joining "map edges" if I want to show several map pieces together.

Characters!

...yes there will be a  good selection of them. There will be "Friendly NPC's" like tavern keepers, who guide you through the path, and give you quests and drop some  valuable tips. Then there will be the "Opponents" - the ones to fight with and  loot, if you  are lucky! 

  I'm not 100% set on the style of the NPCs imagery, here are some tests to get the feel right. The card art is currently very "Flashy" - I might need to tone it down, if the style of characters ends being more flat shaded Linge Claire and less smooth shaded. Lets see!

Cards look like this now:

I'll make a separate post about the game mechanics once they are solidified enough & I have made some NPC opponent decks that actually make any sense.

Playable Demo When !?

There is a playable demo of the card battling system already , playable straight in a browser - and it works on my Android phone too, could work for you too with some luck.

I'll try to update the project often, monthly at least. Lets see how it goes.

Throwing in some comments & encouraging  pep talk will make me go harder!

Take Care, 

-Mauno