State of the Game: Prealpha
Here’s a snapshot of where the game stands right now. I’m calling it “Pre-Alpha” as it’s honestly not ready for serious play just yet. The bones are there, the core elements that make an RPG all exist, but the magic of the AI-driven content engine isn’t up and running yet. Overall that probably leaves it feeling pretty vanilla right now, but just wait, the magic is coming very soon!
What Works
Character Creation
You have a roster of characters with attributes, skills, abilities, and equipment. What’s more the beginning of the content engine magic is here, as the first thing you’re asked to input are your character’s motivations. These motivations will be the initial inputs into the content engine. The AI infrastructure is in place, as you’ll see it does check your answers against some basic guidelines: nothing out of theme, and no problematic content.
Map Generation
New adventures get a procedurally generated map to explore. Movement around the map is all functional and respects roads, rivers, etc. You get movement points (4 each day) with variable movement costs based on terrain.
| Terrain | Movement Cost | Hexes/Day |
|---|---|---|
| Plains | 1 | 4 |
| Hills | 2 | 2 |
| Forest | 3 | 1 |
| Mountains | 4 | 1 |
| Swamp | 4 | 1 |
Encounters
A basic encounter system is up that currently fires every time you enter a new hex. Tables are rolled on and encounters are generated. Support exists both for combat encounters and more story-driven encounters with branching logic and ability checks. It’s all highly scriptable and generic and will be easy to expand on as we go.
Combat
Core combat is totally functional. You get a nice 2D grid map that you can move around and fight monsters. Monsters have a rudimentary “good enough for now” AI, with enough smarts to try and close with the player if they have a melee weapon or maintain distance if they have a ranged attack. The player has variable abilities driven by what equipment they have, with melee attacks, ranged attacks, and AOE all functional.
What’s To Come
NPCs
The first big addition towards dynamic content creation will be the NPC system. Inspired by Delta’s Outdoor Spoliation games, we’ll pre-populate the map with a couple key NPCs that could be major villains and/or helpful quest givers. They’ll have full stats and motivations populated by random generation. They’re not created by AI, but they’ll be a major input into the AI when creating additional content. The AI will use these NPCs to determine what else exists in the map, and how to adapt the map based on player action. I’m hoping interacting with these NPCs will be major highlights of play.
Adventure Modules
Eventually I hope to create a means of generating “adventure modules”. Think of these like inputs to the generation of a new adventure. They’ll include:
- Major NPCs to appear in the adventure, along with their motivations.
- Map data - either a static known map to use or maybe just specific locations the procgen must place during generation.
- Important encounters that should be placed on the map.
- Wandering monsters or other incidental encounters to include.
I’m really thinking of this like pre-written D&D modules with the AI as the DM. When you take your character on a new adventure, you should be able to select one of these to play instead of a completely random one. Maybe down the road I’ll even open the door to letting players create these to share with each other.
More Content
Right now the content is so bare bones - just a handful of wandering monster types and a couple story encounters. I need to write a ton more of these. My thought is to have most of these hand-written ahead of time and the majority of the work the AI will do is in selecting which to include and where. I will probably also explore allowing the AI to write some on the fly, but this should be the exception not the rule.
Also I need more equipment, more abilities, more loot for the player to discover! I think I still haven’t actually implemented any kind of statistical effect from wearing armor. That should probably be a thing.
Progression
There’s no system yet for gaining XP and leveling up. I figure that’s not super important to finding the magic of this game. I’ll probably go to Alpha without it, but it will be needed for Beta and eventual launch to give the game legs.
Hirelings
I originally imagined you’d potentially be able to hire hirelings to join your party and help you in combat. Still on the fence about this one actually. Saving it for much later.
Priorities
So that’s where we stand right now. My focus right now is on getting a bunch more content in and making the NPC system. Once both of those exist I can start the real experimentation with the AI. I want to test both having it intentionally choose stuff that would have otherwise been random rolled on a table, and possibly even having it generate more dynamic content.
Right now the game feels like a pretty standard and very random turn based RPG. More content will make it at least a little more interesting, but I think the real magic will be having that content influenced by the stated goals of the player made during character creation.