This project is inspired by the board game Descent, Journeys in the Dark. Like all the projects I plan on making tutorials for, it will be a desktop game. The game will contain most of the same gameplay elements with a few changes to the formula. The reason I’m starting with using an existing game is because I find it’s easier to implement something that has already been thought through, with defined rules, than coming up with something completely original (though I do plan on doing stuff like that in the future).
I plan on implementing this with the Godot game engine. I don’t have very much experience with it yet, but it appeals to me from the stuff I have tried out. Unity would be my second choice due to my familiarity with it and my preference of C# over GScript, but I don’t anticipate needing all of the extra functionality Unity provides, and Godot has a much smaller overhead.
End Goal
Playable quests with an optional overlord (either AI or Human-controlled)
Stretch goal: playable over the internet; a full playable campaign
Breakdown
- Grid layout
- Unit movement
- Introduce obstacle tiles, water tiles, and impassable edges
- Edit #1: Introduce lava and pit tiles too
- Unit stats
- Speed, health, defense, and physical size
- Unit types (Edit #3: this section fits better under Unit stats)
- Hero, Monster, MonsterLeader
- Monster group concept
- Add stamina and attribute stats for Hero and MonsterLeader
- Define actions
- Movement (add stamina)
- Attack (only base concept: attack – block = damage)
- Skills & Specials (only definition)
- Rest
- Stand up
- Interact (general term for doing something on an adjacent space)
- Revive unit
- Investigate
- Open/close doors
- Line of Sight (Edit #2: Cover later in the process)
- Turn system
- Introduce action point limit and other restrictions
- Hero turn and Monster turn
- Skills (Edit #4: Covering before Event System)
- Single-use and multi-use skills
- Skill cost
- Battle Scene (Edit #5: Creating this section)
- Create a way to simulate attack and defense rolls
- Streamline the system to make it reusable for multiple configurations of attack/defense
- Event system
- Quest objectives
- Interruptions concept
- Equipment and unit inventory
- Revisit attack action
- Surge points
- Equip requirements and stats
- Unique attack wheels
- Inventory size
- Revisit attack action
- Define Godot Resources
- Create items, skills, equipment
- Tie it all together
- Create a simple demo map with basic objectives
It’s likely that I have missed some steps while thinking through this breakdown list and will need to revisit and revise it as time goes on. If and when I do, I’ll mark these revisions with “Edit #” so that both future readers and future me can see what edits I made and in what order they happened, just for reference.
Let’s get started!