Tsel do Bahn, Part 2

My Final Project has been kicking into high gear - we have Alpha turn-in on Tuesday, and as the QA Producer, I've been busy helping the programmers and artists hammer out bugs left and right - but I've still had some time to work on my own personal project, Tsel do Bahn. I've basically made two big pushes: Improving the player's ability to impact himself (and his awareness of it), and the player's ability to impact the environment.



Above: The improved HUD, with status indicators and the Sheathed Weapon.

The first thing I'll mention are potions, and their statuses. You can see those statuses indicated in the HUD on the image above; from left to right, they are Armor Up, Attack Up, Speed Up, and Invincibility (star sprite courtesy of Super Mario All-Stars). Each of those statuses are currently granted by a potion, used from the hero's inventory in the Pause screen as a (stackable) one-shot item. Drinking multiple potions of the same type will combine the durations of the potions, but will only use the value (effectiveness, or strength of the status granted) of the weakest potion.

The 'Sheathed' weapon is my interpretation on Zelda's classic "have more than one tool accessible at a time" mechanic; here, you select the Sheathed weapon on the Pause screen using the Talk key (defaulting to Left Alt), and switch between them using the Tab key. This still allows you to have more than one tool at your disposal without going back into the menu, but keeps me from having to worry about that tool's effect happening if you talk to someone, and from having to get away from the number of buttons on a Game Boy - if Weapon is B, and Talk is A, and Tab is Select, with Enter as Start/Pause and the Arrow Keys as the D-Pad, then I'm set on buttons for the game.



Above: The Fosse Grim weapon, about to break a breakable block.

The other push I've made, allowing the player to interact with the environment, has focused on a set of three tools: the Cane of Somaria (idea from Nintendo); the Fragarach, or as I misspell it, the Fargarach; and the Fosse Grim - tools of Earth, Wind, and Sea, respectively.

Tsel do Bahn already had the Sokoban functionality in it; namely, you can push blocks into pits to turn the pit into passable terrain. Using the Cane of Somaria, you can create a block of your own, wherever you like, and push it into a pit. If you use the Cane again, though, the old block will be unsummoned, and the pit will un-fill, becoming untraversable again.

The Fargarach is a sword that, when charged up - ohr, yes, I've implemented hold-the-button-down charge attacks, by the way - creates a gust of wind that pulls enemies towards you, or pulls you towards its endpoint, much like a conveyor belt. There are, of course, other gusts of wind that can exist without being summoned by the Fargarach's help. A stream of wind can be stopped by pushing a block in its path, including a Somaria-summoned block. A stream of wind (including a Fargarach-summoned one) can also turn a windmill, visible in the image above, middle-bottom; this acts much like a switch or a button, causing things to happen when activated by wind, or when deactivated by stopping a wind with a block.

Finally, the Fosse Grim is a violin that acts as a ranged weapon, shown in the image above. When its charged-up attack is used, its musical note will create a temporary waterspout on impact, which can harm enemies further. This waterspout will also destroy breakable objects, including cracked blocks - which, yes, can be pushed around to block wind or fill pits.

The three tools above are going to form the backbone of puzzle-solving elements in Tsel do Bahn - I may implement more tools, but I can now say that there are enough in there to form enough non-boring, non-repetitive puzzles that the game will be alright if I don't add any more tools. Combined with the ability to switch to a second tool without pausing, and the ability to boost one's combat potential for a limited time and at a cost of resources, I can fairly say that Tsel do Bahn is now transitioning from "Tech Demo" to being an actual - dare I say it? - game.

But, it won't be a real, full-fledged game until it has a few other things... Like, say, music and sound effects, or maybe a plot and some dungeons. The latter two will come when I try to make this a Real Game for NaNoWriMo, but the former two... Maybe that'll be what I tackle next. Who knows? I just hope I have the time to, with Final Project kicking into a higher gear for me.

Pokewalkin'

I got my girlfriend Pokemon SoulSilver a few days ago, as an early birthday present. She's played one of the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, thinks Pokemon in general are adorable, and loves old-school RPGs, so I figured it'd be a good fit for her. I forgot about the Pokewalker accessory that comes with it, though I remembered, after purchasing it and seeing it in the box, that I had thought it kinda silly when a friend showed it to me back when HeartGold and SoulSilver first came out. (If you weren't aware, the Pokewalker is a pedometer that you can load a Pokemon from your actual game into in order to level it up, 1 EXP per step; you can also catch additional kinds of Pokemon and find a wide variety of items on it, both of which would be difficult to do in the early parts of the game.)

So it's a little surprising to me that it's been so fun to mess around with it.

Now, a caveat: I enjoy going out for a walk. Yes, I live in Florida right now, and it's incredibly hot and muggy and unpleasant outside, but even so, I enjoy a good stroll. So, when I use my girlfriend's Pokewalker, I'm actually walking with it. As an additional caveat, I was a big Pokemon fan back in the day - in fact, the original Pokemon Gold is my favorite version, hands-down. So, in retrospect, I'm basically a big ol' mile-wide-bullseye for Nintendo here.

But this isn't my copy of HeartGold, or my Pokewalker, it's my girlfriend's. And that actually made it more fun. Not just in the sense of, "it's someone else's toy," but because I can use it to help my girlfriend out. By catching Pokemon she couldn't catch for many hours of gametime, and finding useful items for her, I'm helping her playthrough without disturbing the sanctity of her saved game; for any couple, this is an amazing arrangement and one that should be much more commonplace.

Also: The Pokewalker reflects a growing trend, reflected in the video below, by Jesse Schell.

http://g4tv.com/videos/44277/dice-2010-design-outside-the-box-presentation/#video-48439

He talks about how games are encroaching on reality, and how eventually, every game will have a portion in reality that translates into increased power or access within the game. While I think he goes a little bit far in his end-game scenario, mostly for reasons of balance and inter-corporation co-operation (though his presentation is hilarious and well worth the watching), he is, basically, describing exactly what the Pokewalker does: By doing things in the real world, you become more powerful in the game world.

Not only does the Pokewalker allow you to interface reality with fiction, but it also encourages 'good' behavior - in this case, walking and getting exercise, although the Pokewalker's instructions say that it won't work well if you're jogging or doing other non-walking activity. It's as if the game is actually encouraging kids, subtly, to go outside and play; something parents have been wishing video games would do effectively for the past 25 years, if not longer.

Because of this, and Nintendo's overall goal to tie their game systems to the idea of healthy lifestyles (see: Wii Fit, Boktai, among others), I would not be surprised to see a similar accessory become standard issue for whatever comes after the 3DS or the Wii - something similar to every gaming snob's prized cause, the VMU. A little pedometer that can have game mechanics loaded on to it from a specific game, then wiped and re-mechanic'd for a different game, but always able to read your daily step count, or heart rate, or BMI, or galvanic skin response... You get the idea.

And given how much fun it was for me to play with the Pokewalker, I hope the console manufacturers do, too. I wouldn't mind walking around and collecting Star Bits, or Missile Upgrades, or gold pieces, or whatever else the games I play would want to give me for being a good, fit person.