The King's Shroud - Tactical Action RPG

I'm Oliver, Lead Developer on The King's Shroud and one of the Founders of Mercurial Forge (also our dev blog) my small indie team. It's comprised of three people, myself as the lead programmer, character modeler and designer, Allison our animator, rigger and concept artist, and Eric our creature and environment modeler.

Pre-Alpha Play Through of Combat Demo​

Latest Update: Pre-Alpha 11​

This week Pre-Alpha has officially ended and the first playable is done. We've proven the game is playable and fun; it's unfinished and still very rough but the concept is solid! I added a new full integer HP system; it's no longer percentages. The targeting arc has been fixed. A new avoidance system has been added to enemies to detect attacks from different directions and respond. Lastly, I cleaned up the scripts and commented to code properly. The list of changes are as follows:

• New form of calculating HP and damage updated across player and enemies to reflect full integers now
• Fixed the Targeting Arc
• Added IBL Shader
• Avoidance Properties now allows enemies to dodge and block the player based on the angle of attack
• Cleaned up Scripts
• Pre-Alpha ends and Alpha begins

Read the rest of the update details here: King's Shroud Pre-Alpha 11: Pre-Alpha Ends and Design Beings

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The King's Shroud

The King's Shroud is a story based Tactical Action Role-Playing Game. It's not your typical Tactical RPG; this one will be a lot more fast-paced without sacrificing the elements of strategy that players expect in a TRPG. This is a single player RPG in the spirit of hardcore dungeon crawlers that are both punishing and rewarding. We're talking limited save points, item resourcing, traps, and intense combat.



Gameplay

For King's Shroud much of my inspiration is coming from my favorite classic RPGs like Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Tactics Ogre. I intend to bring back what made games like these so amazing all while applying more modernized mechanics and presentation. The game will stand as an action/adventure role-playing game focusing on strategy based combat, weapon customization, alchemy combination and puzzles. The game features NO stats or levels and asks players to focus more on weapon creation and strategic choices to succeed in combat.



World

The game world will be centralized around a location pertaining to the main story and all events will take place in and around this location. Locked doors, hidden passages, secret bosses and ancient forges all await those careful enough to look for them. There will be a nice blend of open exploration-based areas and classic room-by-room dungeons featuring traps and dangerous enemies.



Combat

The game features a strategic combat system through which players stop time before attacking. During this period they are given a targeting system known as the Targeting Arc: a visual representation of the weapons swing path and area of damage. Players control and set the position the arc for the most effective strike, targeting limbs and weak points. Using this in combination with being able to disable limbs adds another level of strategy to the combat.

Alchemy grants players powerful offensive and beneficial aids. Players first craft a choice selection of potions to take with them on their next journey, being smart about what potions aid your play style is important. Players then have two types of potions, consumables, which aid the player, and offensive, which can be thrown at enemies for different effects, even area based splash damage.



Visuals

We will be hand-painting the entire world to capture a more classic and stylized look. Using point-based texture filtering will add a more gritty feel to the visual quality and a clear call back to when games didn't need filtering or normal maps to be considered good, visually or in terms of gameplay.



Platform

Our target system is the Ouya, so we'll be working within the limitations of the system's hardware and controller. However, we don't quite see these as limitations, but rather like guidelines. This game is very much designed for a controller and TV experience. There is a possibility of releasing a PC-based version or even Web version, but that is far beyond the initial scope of this project.



Features

• A Tactical Action RPG with no stats or levels
• Skill and strategy-based combat and gameplay
• Targeting Arc combat system: You decide how and where to strike
• Disable limbs and chain Impact Effects with strategic affects
• Weapon Customization: Meld and forge metals to upgrade weapons
• Alchemy Laboratory: Collect regents and craft potions to aid you in combat
• Experience a richly detailed, hand painted 3D world and characters
• Hardcore return to classic dungeon crawlers
• Rich story and cutscenes

 

This week I worked out the basics: the movement and the targeting arc. The most interesting feature is the targeting arc and I wanted to make sure it's fun to use and play so I put a lot of thought and time into it.

Movement

Movement is one of the most basic features in any game. The way the player gets around the world can seem so simple and yet it can be one of the most complex things to playtest and get right. I decided to use a movement system relative to the camera; this is because I foresee a lot of camera movement as players are working with the targeting arc. I want them to be able to move the camera as much as they need and never have the controls seem to change or feel different.

Jumping is also a basic feature. I'll be adding climbing and ledge grabbing soon in order to speed up height changes and player movement through the level. This will not be a major focus, as this is not a platformer, but it will allow us to create some more unique levels.


Targeting Arc

The targeting arc is the main element of combat. It dictates the player's attack range and space. The size and range of the arc differs depending on the style of weapon the player has equipped, making weapon choice and strategy work hand-in-hand. The arc can also be tilted side to side and raised or lowered in order to strike at different areas of the enemies.

As players go through the game they will be able to strategize using these simple actions to disable different areas of the enemies for advantages. When fighting against large groups it will be pivotal for the player to make use of their attack space strategically. For example, taking out an enemy's legs in order to slow them down or attacking the head of a caster in order to silence them.

The targeting arc needs little more work; right now it feels a little clumsy when moving it as it's rotational space is NOT relative to the camera, which is our intended goal. This causes confusing controls and will be fixed in the coming weeks.

 

This week I worked on the hitbox recognition for body parts and damage as well as the on-screen damage and GUI information. Both work nicely together; the on-screen damage feedback helps illustrate which body parts have been hit.

Hitboxes

All enemies are made up of individual colliders that form the whole body, as many as are needed to provide accurate body volumes. All hitboxes are aware of which body part they are, so when being struck each part can only be hit once during that swing.

Some behind-the-scenes logic keeps track of what has been hit by the player during that swing, as well as what body part will be hit first, second, and so on. This will help later when swings can cut through characters and hit multiple body parts. These little details will make the game a lot more strategic and fun. It also keeps the game accurate which is important when you're trying to give players complete control over the combat like I am.

Lastly the body parts are aware of their own local HP so they can be disabled locally. Some logic can be used to disable them based on percentage of total enemy HP or designer set amount, as well as equipment and stats to govern damage intake.


GUI Damage

The on-screen damage is a simple function that can be run at any time so long as it's fed the damage amount, position, and whether it's healing or doing damage. This keeps things really simple for me when creating the enemy class. The damage value is also prefixed and appended with the proper HTML code to allow for coloring in the new Unity4 rich GUItext system.

The display damage function also works if you pass a string and will display status effects and whether or not they have been inflicted or the character has recovered. Coloring also works with these as well.

In order to get the text animated I just animated the GUItext asset's pixel offset using the Unity animation system. I chose this method because it was simple. I could have animated the text using some math functions but I had much more control using the animation system; this way each GUItext object easily has all the proper animations attached to the animation component and when instantiated it plays the corresponding animation.

 

This week I'm showing off the camera system I've been working on, which, to be honest, I've been rethinking and will possibly rewrite. I'll also be showing some of the movement features, like the ability to auto-climb objects to streamline movement. And lastly, I show off some graphical updates and performance updates on the targeting arc.

Read the rest of the update details here: http://www.mercurialforge.com/2012/08/pre-alpha-03-camera-movement-and.html

 

This week I worked on some new features for the arc. I got the early stages of botching attacks working; now players can hit walls and fail attacks. I got damage curves working: a cool element I think adds strategy and learning to master a weapon. And lastly, I got the basics of ledge-grabbing and climbing working.

Read the rest of the update details here: http://www.mercurialforge.com/2012/08/pre-alpha-04-new-arc-features-and-ledge.html

 

This week I cleaned and compressed my code, started on the inventory and equipment code base, created the classes required for weapons, armor, items and more, worked on the targeting arc visuals, and lastly began work on the actual design notes and plans, including concept art.

Read the rest of the update details here: http://www.mercurialforge.com/2012/09/pre-alpha-05-inventory-equipment-and.html

 

This week I focused mainly on the targeting arc features and bugs. I've taken a new approach to the development, now focusing on a single feature of the game and working with it until it's about 80% then moving to the next. This should help development advance much smoother towards Alpha. The changelog is as follows:

• Increased arc hit detection accuracy.
• Increased damage curve sensitivity.
• Fixed vertical rotation bug on arc.
• Added unique damage curves for each weaponClass.
• Now detecting arc angles and can resize the arc based on weaponClass
• Piercing weapons now have a thrusting mode when in vertical strike.
• Botching now detects objects and enemies between the player and the arc.
• Updated character placeholder graphic.
• Upgraded Project to Unity 4.0.0b8

Read the rest of the update details here: http://www.mercurialforge.com/2012/09/pre-alpha-06-new-arc-features-and.html

 

This week I finished the last few elements of the arc which brings it to the pre-alpha complete mark. I was also able to evaluate uSequencer as our cutscene editor and found it to be the perfect time saving, unintrusive solution that is fully customizable. The changelog is as follows:

• Detect arc angle and set damage accordingly
• Clamp arc's vertical rotation around character
• Remove Action Points when attacking and disable arc when AP is too low
• Implemented a Tick System for regeneration and status
• Regenerate AP overtime
• Implemented battle mode and explore mode
• Evaluated uSequencer

Read about the rest of the update details here: http://www.mercurialforge.com/2012/09/pre-alpha-07-cutscenes-and-completed-arc.html

 

I've watched all the videos and love what you have done. Especially good work with the arc. Thanks for the videos and keep them coming!

 

Thanks for the watches! I post every weekend on my blog and will do so here as often as I can.

 

This week I finished the basics for the camera system; it has no object collision detection yet but that will be under research soon. I licensed uSequencer because of its amazing features and great support. I made a huge last-minute change to the arc. I started using Microsoft SkyDrive and also stopped using it the same week. The changelog is as follows:

• Camera basics completed
• Full control over camera with second control stick
• Rotation limits on camera
• Ability to zoom camera in and out
• uSequencer acquired
• Animation requirements evaluated
• Targeting arc angular rotation made fully controllable instead of incremental

Read the rest of the update details here: King's Shroud Pre-Alpha 08: Camera, Cutscenes and Arc

 

Latest Update: Pre-Alpha 09​

This week I worked on the database system and an editor window to help with database item creation. I received some interesting insight into the combat of the game and some features that could make it more interesting, this resulted in me rewriting a lot of the combat system. Lastly, I started work on the AI system and now have enemies thinking and moving. The changelog is as follows:

• New class system for limbs that control damage
• Edits to weapon class to support new combat system
• Reworked metal and forging system to be less complicated and more streamlined
• Minor changes to the Targeting Arc, including removing Damage Curves
• Started AI, have dectection working by sight and sound
• Enemies know which attacks to make based on angle relations to player
• Rewrote Database class to reflect design changes and return items quicker
• Created custom editor window for use with Database management
• Pauseable classes now allow for pausing during targeting arc aiming

Read the rest of the update details here: King's Shroud Pre-Alpha 09: Database, Combat and AI

 

Nicely done, good work !

 

This week I worked on combat and implemented a new system known as the Action Gauge to help control the flow of battle. I also continued working on the AI, focusing on finding the best ways to approach different needs for future implementations. I also worked on enemies as a whole: they now come in three new types and have a host of new properties to make each enemy different. Lastly, a number of new edits have been made to fix certain issues during gameplay. The changelog is as follows:

• Player and Enemy classes have a new, more robust health and damage system in relation to their limbs
• Limbs can now be "Dying" and affect the player and enemy depending on which limb is dying
• Enemy AI will now try to always face the player unless fleeing
• Enemies are more susceptible to damage from behind
• Enemies are now divided into types: Health based, Limb based and Sigil based
• The enemies have a lot of new parameters for adjusting combat style and strategy
• New Enemy inspector for editing enemy properties
• The Action Gauge has been created to deepen and balance combat without complicating it
• The Targeting Arc now has a slight delay preventing players from accidentally swinging if they are button mashing

Read the rest of the update details here: King's Shroud Pre-Alpha 10: Combat Playable and Enemies

 

Try editing the walk and jump animation (Unity Already Gives them to You). Nice work though. Looks Fun

 

Animation isn't important at this stage, but I have an animator on the project. However I can't show off the animation yet because the animation in running in U4 beta.

 

Do you use pathfinding for your AI or more of a "line of sight" system?

 

We use both in tandem. Pathfinding to allows the enemy to track and give chase. LoS to determine if the enemy can detect you in vision based instances. Some enemies use sound to detect you, and others are omniscient of your presence.

 

This week Pre-Alpha has officially ended and the first playable is done. We've proven the game is playable and fun; it's unfinished and still very rough but the concept is solid! I added a new full integer HP system; it's no longer percentages. The targeting arc has been fixed. A new avoidance system has been added to enemies to detect attacks from different directions and respond. Lastly, I cleaned up the scripts and commented to code properly. The list of changes are as follows:

• New form of calculating HP and damage updated across player and enemies to reflect full integers now
• Fixed the Targeting Arc
• Added IBL Shader
• Avoidance Properties now allows enemies to dodge and block the player based on the angle of attack
• Cleaned up Scripts
• Pre-Alpha ends and Alpha begins

Read the rest of the update details here: King's Shroud Pre-Alpha 11: Pre-Alpha Ends and Design Beings

 

if you need help from a modeler add me on skype leonardarmstead

 

Good stuff.

This is one of those rare indie games where not only am I highly anticipating watching the development, but am actually dying to play.

 

@leoarmstead thanks for the offer, we're not looking for anyone else right now but if we need some help, I'll look you up.

@Not_Sure glad to here, lots of people seem to be interested in what we're doing. It's nice to see people are interested in this idea.