The Mana World Forums

Project status Mar 14th 2012:

• Tileset (20%): Crush http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... =8&t=15657
• Monster Sprites (design phase): Dude http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... =8&t=15657
• Monster drop sprites: (nobody yet)
• Mapping: (Crush?)
• Backstory: (nobody yet)
• Scripting: (nobody yet)
• Monster stats: (nobody yet)
• Music?: (nobody yet)

This thread is a central point for the organization of the chess dungeon project. I will update the first post regularly.

As you can see there are still a lot of open tasks which can be taken by any new or existing contributor:

Monster drops:
Interesting question. What do chess pieces drop? When you have any idea, feel free to post in graphic development. Maybe the backstory writer or script writer can deliver some hooks.

Backstory:
What's the plot behind the chess dungeon? And how is it integrated into the rest of the game content? What quests could lead the player characters into it?

The only key points I would like to purport is that it was created by an insane wizard who was obsessed with solving chess problems. But I didn't think about further details, so these are up to you.

Oh, and you should know that I plan to use a background image for the map which is basically a black void with some chess boards and pieces floating in the background. The whole scenario will be very surreal and defie all laws of physics. Also, the map design will be twisted and confusing.

Some TVTropes article regarding chess as a potential inspiration source:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... boardDecor
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChessMotifs
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... ePlayChess

Scripting:
Doing the scripting (map warps and quests) is something which still has time until the mapping is finished and the backstory is written. But I would still like to have someone responsible soon.

Music:
I don't think that we already have a soundtrack which would be suitable for this scenario. The music I had in mind while designing my tiles was the soundtrack of the Clock Tower dungeon from Ragnarok Online. Something in that general mood would be great. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbdjs53lg30

Mapping:
I will definitely create at least one map. That's part of my workflow when designing tilesets. Depending on what the backstory writer comes up with, more than one map could be required. When you want to volunteer for that be warned: The tileset will be an absolute nightmare to map with.

Here are some ideas about the storyline and gameplay:

The setting could be an abandoned housing (house, cave?) where you can read books in bookshelves (diaries?) and notes from the insane wizard, with hints about his chess obsession and describing his magical experiments, finally pointing to him getting lost in his own magical world.
Maybe he could have become the king of the chess pieces and challenges every intruder to 'play the game' with him. (challenge as message when entering the dungeon in a style like 'come if you dare', player needs to get deeper into the dungeon to find him)

About the gameplay, I think it'd be really nice to have it repeatable and suitable for high levels or somehow organized in stages, so that you can enter and fight the weaker chess pieces with e.g. level 60 or something and the deeper you get in, the more dangerous it gets. If we want to go with that idea, it'll need to be reflected in the map design.

Other vague ideas:
- should it require/encourage group play somehow?
- should we use the contrast of black/white pieces somehow? so have all the pieces in white and in black and involve that somehow (don't have a precise idea how yet)


I might be interested to do the scripting for this, I already got inspired. But I want to release at least my North Tulimshar quests before I start another new project.

Considering that chess is a strategy game which can not be won with a single piece but only with many pieces working together, it would be a good opportunity for some puzzles which require cooperation by multiple people to solve. Ideally by having to move in certain positions.

Example of a puzzle: The pieces in this puzzle are statues. When a player moves into the red zones, they get a message "The knight statue comes to life, jumps at you and pushes you down into the abyss". The player is then warped back to the start. Unless another player stands in the corresponding green zone, then the message reads "The knight comes to life, but doesn't dare to move from the side of its endangered king" (it believes that the players are queens, because they can move horizontal, vertical and diagonal) and the player may pass.

Can the scripting engine do that?

Crush wrote: The pieces in this puzzle are statues. When a player moves into the red zones, they get a message "The knight statue comes to life, jumps at you and pushes you down into the abyss". The player is then warped back to the start. Unless another player stands in the corresponding green zone, then the message reads "The knight comes to life, but doesn't dare to move from the side of its endangered king" (it believes that the players are queens, because they can move horizontal, vertical and diagonal) and the player may pass.

Can the scripting engine do that?

Mh, we need a script that starts doing something when a player gets on a certain tile, that can be done with an invisible NPC and an OnTouch label. Then we need to check if there's some player in a certain area, that can be done with the command getareausers.
So yes, should be possible to do.