Hopeless

Wanna jump straight to some screenshots and art? Scroll down to the second post!

Name: Hopeless

Story/setting:

The year is 2048, a cure for cancer has been found and widely distributed. Technology has advanced to the point where planes no longer fall from the sky, cars no longer crash, and life expectancy has reached 135 years of age. New drugs to instantly heal all your alignments, problems, and diseases have been created, further pushing life expectancy.

Due to these new advances, there are no longer need for many doctors, nurses, surgens and the like. Plane crash investigators and radio control personell are no longer needed.

Thousands and thousands of people dedicated to these professions (and many more), are now jobless. Homelessness is on the rise, and at an all time high of 28%. Crime is at record levels, while the police force shrink in numbers.

A brand new drug in its testing phase has been created to combat crime; this drug is being added to food produced around the country, which stimulates the aggressive part of the brain, and forces a calm-like nature in subjects.

Unforseen problems quickly arose, with an unbelieveable amount of side affects, including "Auto-suicide" and "Reflectation syndrome" which causes victim's bodies to turn inside out, while still keeping them alive for days at a time and causing excruciating pain.

On top of all of this, a unknown supernatural force is slowly sweeping over the city, consuming victims, and gaining control over their bodys. Swiftly named "The Shadow".

This is where your story begins; hell bent on fixing the world, and restoring order to your city. Little do you know, your life is about to change. All your hopes and dreams are about to take a turn for the worse.

Welcome to the City of Hopeless. I hope you enjoy your stay.

Characters

Playable: 2 Playable characters are available to control at fixed times during the story;

Robert Vana
37 Years of age, and father of 2 kids. Was laid off from work as a Plane Crash Investigator 4 years ago, which left him Jobless, homeless and alone. His wife and family left without a trace, and he now 'lives' under the Sector T-35 bridge with 9 other homeless; which is the only place far from any city, and far from other people, but very dangerous to live and 'clean' food is scarce.
Over the years he has taught himself to survive in the 'wild', but still struggles to cope in the new world; he experiences mild delusions and hallucinations from time to time, which can almost prove fatal in the 'wild'. His biggest enemy is himself.

John Peler
21 Years of age. Adapted to the changes of the world very quickly. Sharp, focused, and an eager to learn. Has trained over the years in many forms of combat, including his strongest feat: Samurai Swords. His quick, agile, and fast movements overwhelm enemies, and can turn the tides of battles in the blink of an eye.
Not much in personally and has trouble holding conversations, which has him nicknamed "The Machine"

Gameplay:

Survival of your character is a big part of the game, where eating and drinking is necessary to keep your character alive. This can done either through; hunting, scavenging, and/or consuming 'clean' food.
Food needs to be 'clean' before consumption, as it could potentially kill you, or leave you with fatal symptoms. The same goes with liquids.

When you are controlling 'Robert Vana', keeping your character sane will also be a top priority, the world will change (all in his head though, not real) depending how sane you are, eventually having the world turn on him and eventually killing him if sanity drops low enough.

(May be subject to change. More gameplay features still need to be decided.)

Combat System:

The combat system is action paced in real time, being able to move around freely within the battle, and use skills and abilities on the fly. A.I. behaves the same, being able to move freely and act on their own. You will be able to control one character during the battle (Which is most of the time the main character) most Melee skills and attacks will require you to be near an enemy to hit, otherwise you will miss (You can't swing your sword at air and expect to hit the enemy from far away)

Outside of battle, when colliding with an enemy or at fixed points, you will transition in 'battle mode' (Much like the Final Fantasy transition) Where you will be 'transported' to an arena like area (Which is themed to which location you are in) Which has restrictions on how far you can move (Areas will be reasonably sized) and will incorporate the system mentioned above.

Battles will be somewhat RPG focused meaning Stats like 'Strength', 'Speed' etc will play a part.

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So what do you guys think?

The game itself is going to be a top town RPG, with an action paced combat system. Much like in the Star Ocean games for the PSP.

Let me know your thoughts and ideas, or anything to add and make this better =)
Maybe you feel like working together on this project? I do prefer to work alone, as I can do everything myself, except for music. We will see what I feel like doing when i start on this.

Screen Shots And Art

Everything here is drawn by me, so please do not steal or re-use. Thank you

This is one scene from the game, where your sanity is low, and you are hallucinating that the world is bright and colourful (Which it is not)

Please bear in mind that this is not completely finished, somethings may be missing and it seems a little empty

The same scene, but with high sanity (Real World)

One of the main characters of the game:
Robert Vana

Updated, and added a Character section.

Give it a look over, and tell me what you think!

Is this something you would be interested in? Should I continue on this?

Game stories, while interesting, tell us very little about what the game will be like. Out of all you've written there are exactly 3 sentences that give me any information about the gameplay:

2 Playable characters are available to control at fixed times during the story

The game itself is going to be a top town RPG, with an action paced combat system. Much like in the Star Ocean games for the PSP.

Being unfamiliar with Star Ocean games, all I know so far is that there will be RPG elements, action-style combat, and restricted character selection. So, tell me more about the game that the players will be playing.

Maybe you could figure out the gameplay yourself

I like the story, the bit where the government adds this drug to all food though is slightly unrealistic i find, because even gordon brown wasn't retarded enough to put an unknown drug into all food and distribute it worldwide / nationally. I do like the bit about technological advances though.. possibly should be set slightly further into the future. It's only 36 years from now. 36 years before now we were convinced we'd have flying cars; technology, it appears, advances more slowly than we think. However i love the homelessness bit, gives it a sense of realism, and the overall idea would be easy to build off

@Hectate -- Sorry about that, i got so hung up on the story, that i forgot to add a gameplay section, which i have just added now, which explains some gameplay and the battle system.
i will add more to the gameplay when i can decide what to add.


@ipe 369 -- Thanks! yeah the year is subject to change, i wasn't really sure what to put, since i didn't want it TOO far in the future. I don't want spaceships flying around and stuff haha. Wanted to keep it modern day as much as possible, just with my own twists to it of course lol.
The food thing I’m not sure about as well, but part of the gameplay is finding 'clean' food which doesn’t have this drug in it, to survive.
The homeless is going to be a big part of the game, since they will be almost everywhere, and will be a source of information to the player (Rumors, getting help, where to avoid, etc.)

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The only problem i have now is how to handle death when you starve to death, does the character die and you have to start from last save? Does the character wake up in some kind of hospital or area being brought back to life by random people?

Maybe you don't die, but it sufficiently weakens you, so you can only survive one hit from a monster and it slows you down etc. I presume there will be monsters? Or is it just fighting for food?

Actually that sounds like a good idea, except maybe it just weakens your character significantly stats halved? stats at 20%? speed halved; walking/attack speed slower etc.
Things like that

And yes there will be monsters, most of them will be animals that have eaten the 'unclean' food which mutates/transforms (whatever you wanna call it) them. Some will be "The Shadow"s creation. Some will be the people who have turned inside out. And alot of the monsters will be your hallucinations, which can still kill you (Brain can't handle it shuts down?)

EDIT: Also added a quick screenshot of what I've done so far. Scroll up! PIXEL ART FTW!

Love the new pixelart, but too cheery, seems like you're skipping around in happy bunny meadows. Try and get some light sources, get a decent engine for light sources and you're sorted, a flashlight would add so much to the atmosphere.

Yeah that is exactly what I was thinking it's like everything is throwing up rainbows, and just looking at it makes rainbows come out every hole hahaha. This is what I have trouble with, making dark and gritty things. But i do want to put this in the game somewhere, like when your character hallucinates he sees the world happy and cheerful, like a coping mechanism.

Hey that sounds like a good idea, I didn't even know there was any light engines for Stencyl? That would really bring up the atmosphere. Then I could probably add a day/night system... Do you know any good engines for this? I haven't seen any.

If I could get a good light engine that I am allowed to use commercially, I might scrap the whole hallucinating bright and colourful world thing...

EDIT: Don't worry I figured out how to make my own light, it's more simple than I thought lol
Also Added a 'Darker' scene, scroll up!

HOLY BERGEEBERS, The sanity idea is amazing! You have to add like a sanity bar or something, and fade the layers out and in depending on your sanity level! When you get really insane, the colours could distort

ah thanks I like how you are really enthusiastic about this game of mine, it makes me motivated to keep going on it XD you seem to be the only one too but eh

I had an idea something like that, I'm still not sure how I'm fully going to do it, the whole fading layers and colour thing could be a bit complicated. Just for now I'm going to keep the idea at just the map changes depending on your sanity between 2 or 3 different versions.

I don't really want a visible sanity bar, since i don't want the player to know if they are hallucinating or not, basically have to figure it out through a few signs, since i want drugs to play a big part in the game with addiction and whatnot, and taking the drugs to cure sanity thinking you are hallucinating when you aren't could be harmful etc. etc.

Also how is the new screenshot i put up? Is it 'dark' enough? it's a bit too grey i think, it's depressing, which is what i am going for though lol

I like the screenshot. The thing is, fading layers is probably the easiest way to go, because changing scenes every few seconds can be disrupting to gameplay, and you will have to keep track of the player's x and y because the scene will reset. So, if you're about to die, all you do is change your sanity and the map resets.
Yeah, i am enthusiastic, not many games have a decent storyline

So what exactly do you mean by fading layers? Know any examples?
The thing is, i'll be keeping track of the player x and y anyway since entering a battle will change the map to the battle system, and then back again.

Also it won't be every few seconds sanity will changing, it will be a semi-slow degrade, and certain things will speed up that process. I'm also not too sure about this. There seems to be a lot of things I'm not sure about, that's why I'm open to ideas from people

There's a block, i think it's in scene > view, which is 'fade layer __ to __% over __ seconds'. I've never used it, but i don't think it's be difficult to use. It'd be great if you got the sanity to work well, it'd be a gamechanger, if you implement it well, the game is a huge success. If not, then it just holds the rest of the game back.