I have created a board game~

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Juno wrote on 2012-08-18 16:33

This'll be brief, because I'm trying to cook for a going-away-to-college party at the same time, but since there's a full, terribly illustrated manual, that's ok.

I've been designing games as a hobby since I was 7 or so. It's kind of what I'm known for amongst family/friends/etc. While I've done some coding, I usually stick to pen+paper. This particular game was/is planning for cpu but I decided to make a paper prototype first to hammer out the details. Eventually, I modified it to work as a board game instead because testing was so fun and I'm not going to have time to code/create artwork (or try to) in the near future.

With everything mocked up in Adobe Illustrator, it did[strike]n't[/strike] take too much extra work to make it postable online. I wouldn't suggest printing it all out unless you want to spend a fortune on ink. In the next week or so, I'll post a barebones version that's a little easier on the printers.

Now, if anyone does try it out, feedback would be great. Something like 'dis gaem sux' is ok, but something more specific like 'dis gaem sux cz i cnt shot webz' would be more helpful. Whether it stays on print or jumps to code, I'll be updating this one to include in my portfolio, any and all input will be looked over.

Far more convenient download link

Upcoming

Pilots - Raven (CC), Rease (GF), Prince Ares (BE), Fritzi (BE)

Changelog: 9/22/2012

Van Flyheight - Shield Liger
-Reduced damage on Van's missiles from 60 to 50.
-Listed missiles maximum range and imposed a minimum range of 3.

Mercenary Irvine - Command Wolf
-Changed initial A&A penetration to 10% from 20%.
-Changed Eagle Eye damage modifier to +90 from +45.

Pilots General
-Added backgrounds on each pilot. Due to space constraints, these are on separate PDFs.

General
-Converted all images to PDFs, for those that prefer things that way.
-Included 'blank' copies of Duos, Enemies and Maps that are much more printer friendly.
-Re-made the manual to have fewer pages and be more printer friendly.
Mentosftw wrote on 2012-08-18 16:39

Heh, you must have been board enough to do that.
Dracius wrote on 2012-08-18 22:51

Quote from Mentosftw;936767:
Heh, you must have been board enough to do that.

OHOHOHOHOHO
Kueh wrote on 2012-08-27 16:24

After playing this with my brothers, I have a few comments.

There was very little in terms of characterization and setting. Aside from a short description of the pilot's personality, there wasn't anything that stopped me from saying, "You're pilot A, and you're pilot B." There wasn't much of a reason to play other than to try it out.

The use of so many abbreviations is tiring. Take A&A, for example. Both A's stand for something different, but they use the same letter. Ar&Ag, or something similar, is still short, but also gives some meaning to the shortening to make it easier to remember. SD, SE, and ED all have the amount of letters and share a letter with both of the other units, making it very difficult to keep track of what is which. (In fact, I'm still unsure what an SD is, I just used them as "seconds". It doesn't say so, but I assumed an ED was an endurance point.) Brevity shouldn't come before semanticity.

Alas, I have not the time to write up my other comments.
Loopulse wrote on 2012-08-27 17:23

Want me to put everything on Google Docs presentation for you to make it easier?
Juno wrote on 2012-08-27 18:08

Quote from Kueh;942424:
After playing this with my brothers, I have a few comments.

There was very little in terms of characterization and setting. Aside from a short description of the pilot's personality, there wasn't anything that stopped me from saying, "You're pilot A, and you're pilot B." There wasn't much of a reason to play other than to try it out.

Ah, so glad you pointed that out. As usual, I feel like an idiot for not noticing it...

The characters in question are all from the zoids anime (Chaotic Century/Guardian Force) or the alternate universe fanfiction (Breaking Even) that I wrote. The primary target was people interested in those things, so it completely slipped my mind to give each character a proper introduction.

Rest assured I'll remedy that immediately.

The use of so many abbreviations is tiring. Take A&A, for example. Both A's stand for something different, but they use the same letter. Ar&Ag, or something similar, is still short, but also gives some meaning to the shortening to make it easier to remember. SD, SE, and ED all have the amount of letters and share a letter with both of the other units, making it very difficult to keep track of what is which. (In fact, I'm still unsure what an SD is, I just used them as "seconds". It doesn't say so, but I assumed an ED was an endurance point.) Brevity shouldn't come before semanticity.

I chose A&A because it was phonetically easy to remember. Even if you forget what the 'A's stand for, remembering what the A&A stat does should be easy.

That said, the use of abbreviations was largely due to limited space when I was using handwritten sheets for testing. At the same time, space is a concern on some character sheets as well, but I'll see if I can cut some of the shorthand via reorganization and/or redesign.

Also, what is semanticity?

Alas, I have not the time to write up my other comments.

Even so, I really appreciate whatever you can write up~

Quote from Loopulse;942436:
Want me to put everything on Google Docs presentation for you to make it easier?

Do you mean the materials posted or your comments? If its the former, don't worry about it for now. I'll be redesigning and consolidating the manual as per feedback from elsewhere and making some changes mentioned earlier in this post too. After that, I'll put everything in a single PDF file to make things easier.

Nevertheless, I'll have to look into this presentation. Could be useful~
Kueh wrote on 2012-08-28 01:20

Quote from Juno;942444:
Ah, so glad you pointed that out. As usual, I feel like an idiot for not noticing it...

The characters in question are all from the zoids anime (Chaotic Century/Guardian Force) or the alternate universe fanfiction (Breaking Even) that I wrote. The primary target was people interested in those things, so it completely slipped my mind to give each character a proper introduction.

Rest assured I'll remedy that immediately.

I had figured it was something like this, after reading the credits page and giving "Zoids" a quick google search (I remember watching it in the past, but I can't remember a single thing about it).

Quote from Juno;942444:
I chose A&A because it was phonetically easy to remember. Even if you forget what the 'A's stand for, remembering what the A&A stat does should be easy.

That said, the use of abbreviations was largely due to limited space when I was using handwritten sheets for testing. At the same time, space is a concern on some character sheets as well, but I'll see if I can cut some of the shorthand via reorganization and/or redesign.

Also, what is semanticity?

Semanticity is whether or not a word means something. For instance, if I have no association between the word "flower" and the thing we call flowers, or if I think "flower" means cakes, it has no semanticity for me. Basically what I meant is that: if you save space in the manual, but it becomes confusing, it might be worthwhile to type it out longer.

Now, I'm not sure if it was actually in there somewhere and I just can't find it, but I had to guess that SD meant seconds, and a unit was limited to 8 per turn, and that ED meant endurance. Shield energy was a relatively straightforward abbreviation, though. I didn't have any problems with that other than it was easily confused with SD and ED.

As for other comments, the main issue was that there wasn't much in the way of unit building. Switching up zoids, pilots, and co-pilots achieved that somewhat, but every unit functioned generally the same. That might very well be a deliberate design choice on your part (since I assume the zoids are all manufactured in a similar fashion), but there wasn't a way I could make a striker-type build, or a support-type build aside from choosing pilots with better attacks or defenses.

Aside from that, the lack of non-combat actions felt a bit constraining. So I'm rescuing someone, but do I carry them in my Zoid? Do I have to break their prison open beforehand, or do I finesse it open with hacking or lockpicking? The way we played it was just that enemies came out of spawners every 3 rounds after their last-spawned mob died, and the prisoners were like individual flags in a game of capture the flag. We just moved into their position, then moved to a safe zone to drop them off.

Overall, the game was fun, but I'd rather wait till it's done (I get the impression it's unfinished) to actually give my input on whether or not it was enjoyable or whether I'd play it.
Loopulse wrote on 2012-08-28 21:27

Here it is.

Just added the rules so far. Gonna add more later.
Juno wrote on 2012-09-04 20:54

As for other comments, the main issue was that there wasn't much in the way of unit building. Switching up zoids, pilots, and co-pilots achieved that somewhat, but every unit functioned generally the same. That might very well be a deliberate design choice on your part (since I assume the zoids are all manufactured in a similar fashion), but there wasn't a way I could make a striker-type build, or a support-type build aside from choosing pilots with better attacks or defenses.

Can you elaborate on this some?

What do you mean by a 'striker' build or support build? Or really, by build at all?
Kueh wrote on 2012-09-04 21:05

Quote from Juno;946720:
Can you elaborate on this some?

What do you mean by a 'striker' build or support build? Or really, by build at all?

Sure.

By striker, I mean someone who does a lot of damage. By support, I mean someone who, one way or another, disrupts damage from reaching allies.

Describing what I mean by build is harder than I thought it would be, lol. I mean a goal of the zoid's capabilities, imagined by the player, and customizing the stats and abilities such that they conform to that goal.

I'll just use Guild wars 2's system to help illustrate my point. In GW2, the weapons you use determine your first 5 skills. Your second 5 you get to choose yourself, from a pool. You can (and should) adapt your weapons to your build, but your second five skills are yours to choose, and that gives each player a different play style, even if they have the same weapons.
Juno wrote on 2012-09-04 22:07

As for the roles themselves:

Of the 6 released pilots, Irvine and Raika could both qualify as Strikers. They both have a short range to do it, but are capable of taking out average enemies in 2 rounds or less. However, that's in my mind...why don't you qualify them as Strikers? While I didn't use that term, it was certainly a goal when designing them.

As far as support goes, that's more intentional. Every duo needs to be able to stand alone, so, there's not much room to have powerful support skills since they'd have to be coupled with passable offense. It ended up being overpowered in every iteration (I tried it ~4 different ways; shelved for now). Instead, co-pilots fill the support role. They're still very difficult to balance between actual power and perceived power though.

Nevertheless, many pilots do have support abilities/options. Duke has a smokescreen that grants a great deal of damage reduction, Irvine has a Pandora's box of status effects, Angela has the ability to inflict moderate MP loss from range or SD loss up close, Raika has an AoE melee damage buff, Van has his shield, which can be used to play a tank/support role with proper positioning and Fiona is literally a co-pilot.

That said, it's possible to support your allies, but it has to be done via play rather than flat out design.

Some examples I saw in the tests we've run so far are:
-Angela reducing a target's MP so that Raika could get full Bodyslam damage in.
-Duke using his smokescreen to lower damage to Raika so she could rack up melee attacks to boost the potency of Analyze and maximize her Ace.
-Van staying on the same space as an ally to provide cover with his shield and healing from Jeek.
-Irvine reducing a targets A&A after coordinating an attack with allies.
-Raika using Hunter's Roar to boost allied MeP followed by several attacks on a target Fiona boosted damage against.

The idea is that you can provide support, but are never a liability on the battlefield. And usually, support abilities can aid you as well so you don't feel silly tackling a challenge alone or apart from your group. Of course, I don't know if that's what you'd consider support :x

edit: Annnd GW2. That kind of system has an impressive number of possibilities. However, due to the massively larger number of interactions, each skill has to be somewhat toned down to avoid unforeseen, gamebreaking mechanics. Though, to be fair, I initially endeavored to have a similar system.

I went with the current one because it allows greater outliers. In GW2, you have a million possibilities in a range of, say, 20-30. I decided on a system that has fewer possibilities in a range of 1-50. While a 50 would be a huge problem in GW2, it can blossom in a more controlled environment.

For example, Angela has 9 MP. This is roughly twice the average and she has the capacity to increase it up to 12, if she blows all 9 seconds on Sprint. The entirety of her set is built around making that 9 MP feel like the best thing in the world while not allowing it to become a huge issue balance-wise.

Irvine can deal 240 damage from 5 range. That's also about twice the average. He can also deal a wider variety of status effects than anyone else and in more potent forms than most others. Finally, with Quickdraw, he can save his actions to take place on the enemy's turn; something unique to him.

Van, Tavin and Fritzi (latter two aren't released yet) all have shields. The shields can, on average, take more punishment than the average zoid. They also regenerate over time.

Raika and Raven (latter not released) can do do unprecedented amounts of melee damage. Raika hits for 180 with no modifications and 300 while her Ace is active. She can alternatively reduce incoming damage under the right conditions by 80% (ranged) and 0-100% (melee). Raven, while not necessarily finalized, can hit for 400 if given a round to prepare, doing which he's doing some damage and dodging quite a bit.

Rease, (not released) has a precarious mix of SD reduction, status infliction and an extremely powerful ranged attack.

In essence, the model is closer to League of Legends than GW2
Kueh wrote on 2012-09-05 01:27

I didn't realize the pilots had that much diversity, but I still touched on that bit earlier.

Quote from Kueh;942648:
Switching up zoids, pilots, and co-pilots achieved that somewhat, but every unit functioned generally the same.

Like I said, it might have been a deliberate choice.
Juno wrote on 2012-09-05 01:50

Sorry about the wall of text; I can get carried away pretty easily...

Basically, I was just asking why Irvine/Raika didn't feel like Strikers and asking your thoughts on the 'everybody has support potential' plan.
Juno wrote on 2012-09-23 14:43

Not surprisingly, being an engineer means tons and tons of work. Thus, this update is a later than what I initially hoped xD. I've got my schedule down now, though, so moving more quickly should be possible.

Most of the work this time went into re-doing the manual (thanks again for the cutePDF tip~), both in terms of redesign and editing. There were a few balance changes based on playtest results, but nothing earth-shattering. All of the upcoming pilots are done, per se, but I want to test them a bit more before shipping.