I’m playing Halls of Torment right now, because I like Vampire Survivor-likes.
If you’ve never played, I can explain it like this:
“Imagine Vampire Survivors gameplay and Diablo II art had a baby”.
OK, maybe that wasn’t terribly helpful.
It’s an action game (or Bullet-hell) where your character is surrounded by swarms of baddies who try to kill you in seconds. You fight back through timed auto-shoot abilities (or controlled shot in Torment), collect xp, and level up.
If you were lucky enough to play arcade games in the 80’s and 90’s, it’s like Smash TV and Gauntlet.
What I adore about Vampire Survivors (and likes) is how incredibly and fantastically simple and straight forward they are. They immediately get to the fun. Which is not easy to do and something I’m trying to improve in Archmage Rises.
The reason I’m writing about it is I had a bit of an “aha!” moment while playing HoT about Map Events.
The first time you spawn on the map, you don’t really know what to do. But there are skeletons coming at you vying for your attention, so you should probably move and do something about it.
This is like the role Events will play on the Archmage map. Something clear, obvious, and immediately interesting to do.
But there is a second element to HoT. They have some treasure off in the distance represented by an edge icon. These provide a goal, something to attain, instead of just standing around fighting skeletons. I have to travel through the skeletons to get to the objective. It makes both more interesting: No objective? I just walk around in circles. No skeletons attacking me, it’s a boring walk to the objective.
And this is the role Regions are to play in Archmage. A larger “Why?” to the game (game loop) of which the Events are an interesting encounter along the way. (I talked more about regions in this previous post)
We’re not really working on the Regions stuff right now because we’re focused on getting the map events in. BUT we have to figure it out a little bit so the Map Events that spawn make sense to the regional issue.
If the region is rich in Iron, Iron resource events will spawn.
If the region is infested with goblins, goblin patrols will spawn.
And spawning the events at the right place and cadence is what we’re working on right now. Here is another short internal video never intended to see the light of day, that I’m showing anyway.
It shows the event tech working, reading the JSON files* and running through some UI execution.
Now: to make it fun!
I appreciate Oonai posting some sample events so I’ll quote their comments here:
1- We are a MAGE, so it would be really good for the roleplaying aspect if our schools and level of magic could give solutions to some events. (example: The bridge over the river collapsed, so now if you want to cross you have to take time to find a way, use stamina/healt to swim to the other side, that can go wrong, or you could make a ice bridge if you have enough water magic. you are not a common adventurer)
2- These events should also be oportunities. You find a caravan in the middle of the road without a wheel. You could help the owner for some money and provisions or you could kill the guards and take all you find useful.
Thanks Oonai, I’m going to try and build both these events with the system next week and see what happens!
Note on JSON Files:
Fairly often I’m asked about User Generated Content (UGC) for Archmage. Historically, the answer has always been a dissatisfying yet certain maybe. As we go, I’m making tech decisions in such a way as to not exclude the possibility. That’s the best I can offer right now.