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[Mesa]

So as at least a couple of you here may know, I've been """working"""
on this project of mine on-and-off for years now, Gun Francisco - a
post-apocalyptic setting featuring wacky mutants, killer robots,
aliens, and the titular city full of guns and other deadly tech.

Well, hundreds of drastic iterations later, while that core concept
still remains, the setting is no longer named after said city (though
it definitely still exists in the setting), and it has had a very
radical change recently that I am more in love the more I think on it.
What is it, you might ask? Well, I'll leave this fancy infographic
here and let you figure it out.

It's big.

So yeah, now instead of being about a lone rebel alien on their
mission to stop their brethren from colonizing Earth (via the big toys
locked away at Gun Fran), it is now about a rather...unusual couple
escaping from their home-ravaged world and crash-landing on (still
ruined) Earth, and seeing Gun Francisco as their possible safe have
...their Wonderland, you could say.
But with many obstacles on their way, the two may not make it to the
City of Guns together. So, they must work together and combine their
contrasting skillsets and extreme personalities, since the wasteland
is a harsh place, unforgiving to any visitors, let alone of the
'otherwordly' variety.

But, the two's relationship is not exactly an easy one, though.

K.T. is very outgoing and extroverted, but also rash, impulsive and emotional -
 she breaks down and cries just as much as she throws fits and laughs at the
tiniest of things.
She is not 'insane', though to classify her as mentally healthy would be wrong -
she is, however, a thrill seeker, and craves destruction, fire and explosives.
Also, chilli peppers. Red hot chilli peppers. Which for some reason don't just
burn her intensines off (or outright kill her for trying to eat stuff from an
alien planet).
Despite all her problems however, she has a big and brave heart and will defend
N.D. at all cost - losing them would leave her that much more prone to making
rash decisions, with nobody to stop them, and with nobody to calm them, her
fits of angers would get that much worse as well.
In combat, K.T. really likes to get up close with her trusty flamethrower, the
Comet, which does leave her rather defenseless against ranged enemies...until
she blows them to bits with a hand missile or two.


If K.T. is like fire, N.D. is more like ice - an introvert, a seemingly cold and
mysterious person of neither male or female identity (read: nonbinary). However,
once they let their thoughts out, their true nature can bloom - a greatly caring
and calm friend who is always willing to help K.T. with her impulses and panic
attacks. That said, they experience breakdowns over seemingly trivial problems
- loud sounds, running out of ammunition, getting ambushed. In these times it's
K.T.'s time to be the supportive one and aid her love through a difficult time.
When it comes to fighting, N.D. likes to stay in the distance and take threats
down with their favorite sniper rifle, nicknamed Sharpie, laying down a wide
variety of traps in the event some smart bandit sneaks past the two.

Overall, the two are very important to each other, and thus losing their other
would be an absolutely devastating event, not merely because it would leave them
alone against the adversities of the ravaged world. Thus, sticking together and
supporting one another is absolutely crucial to making sure that both of the
ragtag refugees make it to the fabled Gun Francisco, where all sorts of dangers
await them still before they can call it home.

Spoiler: And now, an image dump. (click to show/hide)

Several concepts for a logo.


N.D. with their sniper rifle, Sharpie.


K.T. and her multicolored hair in all its fabulous, pigtailed glory.






The first sketch of both K.T and N.D. (in their current forms) that I made, which also indicates some conditions that they may or may not have or at least act like they do (that I also seem to as you might be able to see in one of my Life Advice threads, so don't come yelling at me saying that I'm romanticizing others' very debiliating disorders when it's actually an indirect way for me to personify my own problems; it's meant in good faith, at any rate). :p

There's still some aspects of the old version(s) that I need to clear up in light of the revised setting like the heavier sci-fi elements and the magic/demon stuff and mutations and whatnot, but I will try to focus the setting (at least initially) more on the post-apo/light sci-fi stuff first and foremost before moving onto those secondary themes, I suppose.


Well, this is chaotic, isn't it...

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Posting for support.

Keep going!

Also, threads are inherently hard to visually organize--consider doing a design document. Write it all out on page so that you can see what you HAVE to do at a glance.

[Reelya]

IDK, I think you should keep the name Gun Fransisco in mind, e.g. if you want to make a video game version of this idea, it should almost certainly be called that. Wasteland and Wonderland just sounds like it's not going to pique player's interest, whereas the GF name will make people wonder what it's about. Also "Wasteland" being a thing, your projects name should probably not include it.

[IndigoFenix]

IDK, I think you should keep the name Gun Fransisco in mind, e.g. if you want to make a video game version of this idea, it should almost certainly be called that. Wasteland and Wonderland just sounds like it's not going to pique player's interest, whereas the GF name will make people wonder what it's about. Also "Wasteland" being a thing, your projects name should probably not include it.

Wasteland and Wonderland makes me expect a Fallout setting crossed with an aura of fairyland or something, more grim and mysterious than fun and exciting.

Gun Francisco sounds like a wacky post-apocalyptic romp with.maybe some cyberpunk elements that doesn't take itself too seriously.

[Mesa]

IDK, I think you should keep the name Gun Fransisco in mind, e.g. if you want to make a video game version of this idea, it should almost certainly be called that. Wasteland and Wonderland just sounds like it's not going to pique player's interest, whereas the GF name will make people wonder what it's about. Also "Wasteland" being a thing, your projects name should probably not include it.

I mean I know that Nuclear Throne (ie. my very first now-almost-nonexistent inspiration for this) had to be changed from Wasteland Kings, but at the same time...
There's like a bajillion sci-fi games (and other forms of media, for that matter) that include "Star" in the name and I don't really see a whole lot legal disputes happening there...but at the same time I don't work on any of these so who knows what really happens behind the scenes there.

Anyway, my reasoning behind the W&W name was multi-fold, but I understand that it might not be as...catchy?
Then again someone straight up told me it's a silly name (in a negative way) but at the same time...it's a silly setting, or at least not as dead-serious as most other post-apocalyptic things out there.
Either way explaining that and the thing I'm about to talk about below would stretch the length of this post into something that I myself couldn't slog through with my shit-tier attention span, so that's gonna have to wait.

Anyway, thanks for bringing this back up onto the front page. I got a friend of mine to do a commission of the two main characters (and in the meantime, N.D.'s name changed to L.E. which is not reflected on any of the images >n>') not too long ago and I'm in love with it.
It's really big, though.


I wanted to include another fancy infographic but I've barely spent any time on my desktop as of late (for a couple of reasons) and even though I do have Krita on my laptop, I don't really feel like trying to occupy the table space with both a laptop and a drawing tablet, so I haven't had much of a chance to draw almost anything lately.

Anyway, the thing that I did want to talk about is...bosses. The big, bad, mean and ugly dudes that are basically a staple in video games.
One thing that sort of bothers me is that a lot of the times you don't really feel a...connection to in-game bosses in the same way you do with villains in other media. This might be just an indicator of the kinds of games I play (roguelikes) but there is nothing worse than reaching a 'final boss' and have them be...well, some almost-nobody, really.
This might be a pet peeve I happen to have with The Binding of Isaac with any major boss past Mom (who is not even considered a major boss for in-game progression purposes anyway), but whenever the next final boss got added, it was always a surprise who it would be and that's...I don't think that's how it should work? You should know who your final boss is, so that a victory/failure doesn't just feel like "well, whatever" from that perspective. I really want more of a "uh, I'll get you next time for sure you joker!" or "FINALLY you're dead" reaction, and that can't really be achieved if my first encounter (either direct or indirect) is at the final leve.

So how does one do this? With a system I pretentiously call "The Nemesis System" even though it has nothing to do with Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis system, is much simpler than it, and probably not even nearly as good in its own right. But enough of that, what's it about?

Essentially, there's a certain 'pool' of potential Nemeses in the game, and at the start of your first run, you get assigned a random one out of that pool. They're mean, they don't like aliens, they want to get to Gun Francisco too, and they don't want you there. Indeed, they want you dead. And over the course of that run, they will serve as your villain, and will differ from 'regular bosses' (who still do exist and are more convential) in that you will fight them multiple times over the course of a single run (you will either willingly enter an area knowing that the villain is there, or you might end up getting surprised when they just bust into your regular bossfight, kill whoever meanie you were dealing with, and try to bring you down too), with a final encounter at Gun Francisco itself.
And with each subsequent encouter, they will get visibly stronger and different in some way (more mutilated, with bigger guns, mutations, or any combination thereof), gaining new attacks and patterns that you will have to account for.

However, to further increase the "JESUS FUCKING FINALLY!" factor, you will not be able to get a new Nemesis until you truly defeat your current one - that is, in their final form, at Gun Francisco. Only then will they be 'reset' and a new Nemesis will be chosen for you at the start of the next run.
So depending on how good/bad you are, you might be able to knock them out in a single run villain-of-the-week style, or you might end up locked in multi-runs sagas of struggle.


Far from a final design (or a pretty sketch to begin with), this mean mutant starts out somewhat small and wimpy relative to most other Nemeses, but can quickly grow to be...well, quite menacing, and uglier than sin.

I'll round this up with this Judas Priest song, because it's basically ideal for describing what I spent more server space talking about than I should have in a badass audio form.

[Sir Knight]

"Gun Francisco" likewise is a silly name.  Somehow, guns are so important that they renamed a whole city after them?  It implies a madcap game of unlikely circumstances and explosions.  I think that's what you want.

"Wonderland," though, gets me thinking "Wait, this game is set in San Francisco?  Were they trying for 'Disneyland' and forget that it's in Anaheim?"

Anyway, rock on.  No one's mentioned the mental health thing: I strongly support getting more casual representation in media like this.  Normalize it!

And I definitely like the idea of a quasi-permanent villain whom you are trying to defeat over playthroughs.  It's like the opposite of that roguelike mechanic where you can keep something helpful after you die: here you keep something antagonistic, giving you time to think about it and defeat it.

[Reelya]

There's like a bajillion sci-fi games (and other forms of media, for that matter) that include "Star" in the name and I don't really see a whole lot legal disputes happening there...but at the same time I don't work on any of these so who knows what really happens behind the scenes there.

But wasteland is in fact the entire name of a franchise. "Star" is not. So by including "Wasteland" in your title, and especially as the first word, it's like calling your game "Star Wars Advance" then trying to claim that it's merely an Advance-Wars style game in space, and is in no way connected to "Star Wars". D'ya see the legal difference here between "Star" and "Star Wars"? It's the same as the difference between "Waste" and "Wasteland".

Then look at the shitstorm that was "Scrolls" vs "Elder Scrolls" to see how lawyers can fuck your day royally even if they don't really have a case. Wasteland is made by EA, and EA will sue the living shit out of you if you ever release anything containing the exact name of one of their products.

[Mesa]

Right, point taken. I mean I was never super confident with the W&W, like I said, and I'm far less confident to try to keep it in the face of legal nonsense because that's just an area that I don't want to have to deal with.

Anyway, on a less-but-perhaps-still-somewhat-abstract note, one thing I never fully settled on was the idea of game pace - should your average game take 15 minutes, or 45 minutes?
With this being a wacky action post-apo setting it does make sense for it to be a bit on the faster side, but I feel that the new character duo dynamic warrants a bit of a slowdown because I have a feeling that having to control two potentially-vastly-different characters while also trying to manag Nuclear Throne-tier fuckery is...well, I don't want to say beyond what an average human being can manage, but it definitely sounds like something beyond my measure.
(I definitely don't want to go down the 'classic roguelike' route of hours-long runs because I do not have the attention span for that and the last thing I want to make is something that I can't even personally enjoy to its fullest extent, at any rate.)


Also, I guess if it is going to be the namesake of the setting again, it's probably worth talking about The City of Guns itself.
I always wanted it to stand out in some way from the rest of the setting - I don't want for it to be 'just a big-ass shelter' or 'a more fancy city'.

In the previous iteration of the setting (ie. right before the K.T+L.E. thing), it was meant to be a fortress built around a deactivated demon portal. I want to 'concentrate' the setting a bit more for the time being so that potential plotline is out of the picture for now (same with the "alien race en route to conquer Earth" nonsense, but again, that might make it back in at some point later), but it was also meant to be, for some never-explained reason, a house to a gravity anomaly - floating high in the sky upon a handful of landmasses torn out of the ground - it's as if Laputa was designed by Immortan Joe.
In addition to being the worst nightmare of anyone with a fear of heights, it's also full of deadly automated defense systems that are not exactly fond of the arrival of outsiders like the player or their nemesis, and will continuously try to push out any and all intruders out of Gun Fran.
Thankfully, all those drones and turrets are controlled by multiple...power generators? AI commanders? At any rate, it's something the players can find and disable to make Gun Francisco less of a hell to be in, which conveniently brings me to the fact that the city has a unique (relative to the rest of the game) non-linear structure in a much more 'classic' roguelike fashion - there is nowhere else for you to go after all.

And of course, all while you're trying to fend off and shut down the defenses, you're gonna have to put up with your Nemesis' final form until they finally drop dead. So basically, it's hell, but it's also the final and titular area of the game, so it makes sense for it to be intense that way, doesn't it?

And even then, after shutting everything down and killing the Nemesis, K.T. and L.E. might not be done yet, as there will always be more people trying to make their way into the Gun City...
But at that point it's either something for a sequel, expansion pack, of an update with its own alternate gameplay loop. I might talk about it later if there's interest in that, but it's definitely something on the backburner even for this project's standards where nothing at all is done yet and may never be.

[IndigoFenix]

15 minutes is kind of short for anything but a quick one-off art game or a quick arcade-type with no plot.  You probably don't want to go too heavy on the plot, though, because of the replayability factor.  I think 30 minutes is a good length to aim for.

Have you considered making the relationship between the main characters a part of the game?  Besides gifts (which could be a collectable thing).  You said they would do stuff in cutscenes between stages; maybe certain events in the game could make them closer together and further apart, which could affect cutscenes and change the ending.  Since the cutscenes indicate your relationship score, they would be less tedious on later playthroughs.  Or even be semi-playable themselves!

For example, using synergy well could improve their relationship, and playing as one character exclusively/making one character get all the points could damage their relationship.  And as mentioned, you could collect gifts in the levels to improve your relationship score.

[Sir Knight]

(I definitely don't want to go down the 'classic roguelike' route of hours-long runs because I do not have the attention span for that and the last thing I want to make is something that I can't even personally enjoy to its fullest extent, at any rate.)

Which roguelikes do you have in mind with that timespan?  One of the key things to a fun roguelike is that Losing Is Fun; and games outside of Dwarf Fortress have a hard time accomplishing that when the player loses too much investment.

P.S.: It seems that some people like to whine about the precise definition of "roguelike."  I don't.  I just like Fun.

P.P.S.: Unexplained flying islands are all the rage.  I say go for it.  In fact, feel free to completely spring the fact onto the player right at the end of the game, upon arrival, with no intro.

[Reelya]

BTW how are you coder-wise? I wouldn't mind helping to build prototypes for you in Unity, in exchange for a little help with the art side of things on one of my projects.

Basically we could block out the gameplay, pacing and flow using placeholders for most of it. Getting a playable build out there that's really ugly will in fact tell you what bits are fun, helping to steer the project more.

[Mesa]

Then again my problem is tied as much to "roguelikes that are too slow for my liking and I can never get off the ground" (which may admittedly be just on me being a bad player more than anything) which mostly include 'oldschool-style' (but not necessarily oldschool themselves) RLs like CataDDA or DF in Adventure mode. But also stuff like ADOM and NetHack.
Also the fact that once you do somehow establish yourself, it can all go down far too quickly to be like "Well, at least I tried and that was fun.". (Looking at you, Nuclear Throne.)


Admittedly it's a very fine line for one to thread, where games either end too quickly and in a less-than-fun fashion or where you get so strong that nothing can stop you - as much as I like The Binding of Isaac and consider it my personal 'definitive roguelike', sometimes you end up getting so much momentum that all challenge is gone however I think it's ultimately balanced out by the fact that it's only one of the ways a run can go - you get these super strong that end in 25 minutes while doing every additional objective, and you get those really slow 40-minute marathons where you just barely make it with minimal items.
On a similar note what also bothers me about some games these days is that they have a very low amount of variance in terms of power level - you don't really get runs in Nuclear Throne where you get a janky item combo early that against all odds carries you through half of the game, for example. They feel much more samey and linear and that doesn't appeal to me very much.


I'd like to bring up Enter the Gungeon here (which surprisingly is not really a huge inspiration for GF/W&W since my project kinda predates it) but I have not played it at all so my opinions would be kinda moot, but from watching a handful of gameplay videos it seems like it falls more on the slow-and-grindy side, but I might be totally wrong.
I should really just get it at some point.


And I kinda want GF to lean more towards the Isaac-y side of things where, even at the potential cost of balance, each run can go either the "obscenely powerful" or "just barely scraping by" route since neither 'path' would really create much of a...dissosance?
Like it both makes sense that in a wacky setting you are capable of just steamrolling everything in your path all guns blazing, nothing can stop us yadda yadda, and where you have a slow and painful story of struggle in the wasteland. Or just something in-between.




...This probably hardly makes any sense (I'm on a school PC if that's any excuse) and I apologize for all the babbling, but I basically personally value fun over balance, even if balance is fairly crucial to fun (even in singleplayer/co-op titles).
I know this is highly specific to the eventual execution rather than being something I can really plan for, but still.

BTW how are you coder-wise? I wouldn't mind helping to build prototypes for you in Unity, in exchange for a little help with the art side of things on one of my projects.

Basically we could block out the gameplay, pacing and flow using placeholders for most of it. Getting a playable build out there that's really ugly will in fact tell you what bits are fun, helping to steer the project more.

I'm the worst programmer around, despite my best attempts at trying to wrap my head around things, in and out of school. I simply cannot. I wish I could, but it either bores and/or confuses me to the point where I just break down and never feel like I accomplish much.
Also I'm not a huge fan of Unity because I'm a huge fan of free and open-source software and Unity is basically the opposite of that, even if it is powerful and makes things easy where they would otherwise be very difficult.


(I would like for the game code to be open-source, because there's little reason for me to keep it secret - or at the very least, after people discover all the secrets which could otherwise be kinda ruined by just looking through the source code, but at the same time...wouldn't that be an alternate way to find out how to "get to secret location X" as well? No clue.)


(Then again I'm not expecting this to have an audience big enough for there to be people digging through a Git repo trying to find cool shit, but who knows.)

[Reelya]

(I would like for the game code to be open-source, because there's little reason for me to keep it secret - or at the very least, after people discover all the secrets which could otherwise be kinda ruined by just looking through the source code, but at the same time...wouldn't that be an alternate way to find out how to "get to secret location X" as well? No clue.)

Well you avoid that problem completely by not hard-coding anything specific. It would all be loaded from a data files, and the file would be compressed, encrypted, and obfuscated etc.

But if you're planning to roll your own game engine, and it's going to be a real-time animated action roguelike ... good luck with that if you're not a coder. It's a very large undertaking, and you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone capable of pulling that off for free.

[Sir Knight]

There's something to be said for game development just as a creative exercise, even without a game getting completed.  Namely: it's fun.

But yeah, watching game devlogs where they talk about the insanity of modern procedural games . . . it's not like you just master those in your first personal project.

Then again my problem is tied as much to "roguelikes that are too slow for my liking and I can never get off the ground" (which may admittedly be just on me being a bad player more than anything) which mostly include 'oldschool-style' (but not necessarily oldschool themselves) RLs like CataDDA or DF in Adventure mode. But also stuff like ADOM and NetHack.

Especially looking to adventure mode: a lot of that is in the schedule of reward.  Do players feel like they're accomplishing anything in the first few minutes?  Or that anything's happening at all?  Less "oldschool" stuff manages this pretty well with flashy art and effects--not to mention a quick restart when you die.  (See: Spelunky.)

Also the fact that once you do somehow establish yourself, it can all go down far too quickly to be like "Well, at least I tried and that was fun.". (Looking at you, Nuclear Throne.)

"Usque ad ultimum quod bene."

"It was going so well until that last bit."

--Motto of the roguelike gamer.

...This probably hardly makes any sense (I'm on a school PC if that's any excuse) and I apologize for all the babbling, but I basically personally value fun over balance, even if balance is fairly crucial to fun (even in singleplayer/co-op titles).
I know this is highly specific to the eventual execution rather than being something I can really plan for, but still.

Overpowered weapons can be fun, but I've got two ways to go here.  One: ever played Worms?  Any version.  If you get bored, you can turn up the explosions and damage on everything.  Obviously more fun with more explosions, right?  Not until you get bored with that, too.  Variety is more fun.

Two: there's Blizzard's approach to overpowered weapons.  If playtesting reveals that some ability is too powerful/useful early in development, they'd rather not to make it weaker; instead they'd rather make all the other abilities feel as good as the overpowered one.  Here's it's not a guess about whether "more explosions is more fun": it's actually fun.  So if it turns out that making the game a cakewalk at times is fun, maybe you've found the fun.

[Reelya]

There's something to be said for game development just as a creative exercise, even without a game getting completed.  Namely: it's fun.

It's more fun if you can actually get a demo out. Making your own engine isn't fun unless you like coding, because that's all you're going to be doing. The reason to use e.g. Unity is that you can iterate on working prototypes, whereas trying to create everything from scratch requires a large lead time in which the game is completely unplayable and can't be shown to anyone.