The Chart Must Flow

The first step I chose to take in improving the battle system was to design the interface. As you may have noticed, little to no care has gone into the UI if the previous prototypes. Now that I have a clear view of what the program will eventually require, I can tackle interface design. In mocking up the UI, I outlined 5 screens that the player will move through when playing the game: Select, Inspect, Train, Combat, and Combination (Select and Inspect may eventually be made into one screen if it feels more intuitive).

Though I’m still roughing out the design itself, I have drafted a new gameplay flowchart with everything the player will do in the final prototype, and which screens each activity takes place on. Interface shots to follow soon.

Single Player Gameplay

While I eventually want to turn this concept into an online multiplayer game experience, the product I will be producing for this class will be a single player experience something akin to a typical Pokemon game.

The basic flow of gameplay will consist of a recursive loop. The player starts with a creature that they can train in various aspects. The player then finds a creature with features they find desirable and challenges it in battle. If the player wins, they acquire a sample of the creature’s DNA which they can combine with their current creature and produce offspring. The player can then choose one of the offspring with the most desirable attributes to keep and train, starting the cycle over.

The player will start with a choice of three creatures randomly generated from selected “starter” parts (so as not to generate too powerful of a creature to start with).  From there the player can travel to various locations such as forests, grasslands and other towns. Each of these areas will have different semi-randomized creatures that appear. Each location will have different sets of parts from which it generates creatures.

Details on the mechanics of combat coming soon…