Topic: Epic Etch, my DS game idea

[Switchblade Cross]

So, my friend and I were brainstorming the other day for game ideas that would utilize the DS's touch screen, and this is wat we came up with...

This game, called Epic Etch, is an RPG.  We have yet to devise a main story, but thats not important, our ideas were focused on the game play.  Aslo, we're not sure if the game will play turn based, ala 'Final Fantasy', or action, like 'Tales'.  In this game world, every adventurer, warrior other rightfully earn'ed person is given an Etcher.  The Etchers have the magical ability to create real objects out of paper.  Because of this ability, paper is a hot comodity in this world.

The main gameplay element in thei game would be drawing your items!  But, you can't just find a piece of paper at the begining of the game and draw the biggest, most powerful item either.  In the beging of your adventure, you are just that, a beginner.  Really, all you know in the begining is how to do is draw food, and that, with you 50 pack of notebook paper is enough to get you by at first.

As you progress through the game you learn how to draw diffrent things. Swords, Armour, and lots of other things.  Of course because of techincal issues, you cant just draw these crazy elaborat things, that have to be baic sketches that that game knows, and has taught you how to draw.  The more things you draw the better you get at those particular items.  Lets say, at first your sketch food on notebook paper is only restoring 10 HP.  But, after having drawn 20 of those, their HP value may increase 11 HP.

Here is the part my friend and I like best!  There will be all sorts of paper in this world.  There will be 3 atribuets to paper.  Size, Color and Matrial.  Items drawn on diffrent papers, in turn, yield diffrent atributes.  Material will denote the resulting object's damage dealing, protection or durability aspects.  Drawing the "sword" pattern on a standard sized, white note book paper, will result in a dagger sized kinfe with relativly weak powers and no special atributes.  Draw that same pattern on construction paper of the same size and color will result in a similar small dagger that deals more damage.  Color will denote an objects special ability!  Drawing the "shield" pattern on a large piece of standard brown cardboard would yield a standard large but relativly weak shield.  Draw that same pattern on a large piece of RED cardboard, and that same resulting shield is now resistant to FIRE!  The size of the paper will effect the size of the resulting object, which may in turn effect other things such as HP damage in the case of swords.  Drawing the "food" symbol on a small paper napkin would give an object with much less healing power compared to that of an object drawn on torn down piece of wallpaper.  Availibility of diffrent papers are dependant upon their atributes.  An 7 foot roll of newspaper would be much more rare compared to a tiny napkin.  Strong, druable cardboard would be hard to find, compared to much weaker tissue paper.  White paper, with no atributes would be everywhere.  Other colors would be harder to find, such as the water resistant blue paper or the electrically charged yellow paper.  Transparent tracing paper, though extremely rare, would be able to copy real life objects that can't actually be drawn, such as a special jewel that needs to be retrived, but removing it would result in setting off boobytraps.  You'd have to get pretty creative with some unorthodoxed combinations though.  Why draw food on your red paper when you can make a flaming sword?  Well, food on red paper could result in a very spicy salsa that could burn the mouths of enemies and cause them to get confused and run about the arena, failing to attack you.

The possibilitys are awsome!!



So, what does everyone think?  Any ideas to add to this game?  Suggestions?  Got a good item/paper combo in mind?  Do you think the game would be better turnbased or action?

Thanks!

[couchmonkey]

That's some pretty creative thinking there!  In an ode to Mario & Luigi's awesome Bros. Attack system, I think a nifty idea would be to let the player choose a level of difficulty for drawing.   On the easiest level, the player might be allowed to trace on top of a "perfect" version of the item.  In higher levels, it would be harder to trace, or you wouldn't be allowed to trace at all, but it the item would also be cheaper to make or more powerful.

Or maybe instead of the tracing idea, you might put time limits on the drawings as levels rise.  I like the idea, though.

[Bill Aurion]

I like it...Once devs get enough time to think they'll starting coming up with ways to create a game concentrating fully on the touchscreen...

[Spak-Spang]

I like the idea.  You should have color play an important part of the game.

Here is a few color specific ideas.  

1)Different colors of paper can only make specific things.  This is the easiest way to allow you to draw ANYTHING and allow it to be something.  It would know by the color paper you choose whether it would be food,weapon,magic,whatever.  However, you can also accomplish this by allowing paper made out of different textures.  The Texture or material the paper is made of allows you to create the item...this leads to second idea:

2)Color effects Items usefulness.  Imagine Gold Paper is great to make weapons out of because it is more powerful against all other colored shields and such...but Gold Shields and Armor are still capable of protecting you.  Gold is the rarest paper.  Now you go down from there.  Red may be powerful against Green but Blue is powerful against Red.

With this the idea is to create a weapon, shield and such with each color.  So that when you battle you must juggle the colors you are using within your team.

Last idea.  Once you create an item a power level or with food usefullness is assigned to randomly.  So you create a sword.  It may be a powerful 100 level sword, but it may also randomly get assigned level 25.  If you make a great sword you must take it to various ARTISTS which act like forgers of the items.  They can polish up the usefullness of any item you create.  

This could be an awesome idea.  And of course you should be able to trade your items wireless with friends.

[Zach]

Quote
Originally posted by: Spak-Spang
Red may be powerful against Green but Blue is powerful against Red.

then you could have green beat blue, a rock paper scissors sort of arrangement (red beats green, green beats blue, and blue beats red)

[KDR_11k]

I don't like the level-grind style level up system (the more you make thebetter you get, how about drawing accuracy determining quality or experience gain? If accuracy did nothing the drawing part would just be a gimmick), but the rest sounds nice.

[Spak-Spang]

Well if you make it where you have to draw the items exactly how they are in the game, or as close as possible, then the drawing is still a gimmick, but just less creative because you can't design your own weapons.  

I can actually see where you could argue it is more important to have a more controlled Gimmick.

Still though you could have tons of hidden drawn items that never show up throughout the game that would allow the random experiments to be important.

I like Color paper Paper/Rock/Scissors idea...and the best part about it is you can kinda keep it in threes throughout the game to make it less complicated but still make an advancing system.

You start the game only able to find white,black,red,green,blue, and tracing paper.

Then you find throughout the game PosterBoard papers and they come Dark Red, Dark Green, and Dark Blue, White and Black.

Later in the game you start finding paper that merge powers they are Yellow,Purple,Light Blue (Using the Additive Color spectrum to blend)  

Eventually you will find Bronze, Silver, Gold paper which will be the highest color order of paper.  

[KDR_11k]

Random experiments are bad enough with mixing and matching elements (because you need to brute force), trying that with pictures wouldn't work. Perhaps allow for a freestyle design, but that would still be hard to implement (is that a sword or a hot dog?).

[Spak-Spang]

KDR:  That is why you allow different kinds of Paper Texture to determine what type of item you are creating.  So if you are freestyle creating a sword, you must use the Poster Board Paper, but if you are designing food you must use Crepe Paper, or such and such.  Then you also add the layer of colors on top of that.

That way if you want a sword that looks like a Hot Dog you can have one.  Or if you want a Gelatine Sword for an item you can have that.  

That is what makes the game so much fun is that you can design anything for your weapon, and then you can trade those weapons with your friends.  

I know this is hard to impliment...which is why I suggested the hidden weapons.

You don't have to attempt to get the hidden weapons to win the game.  Its for those that want to try and find the secrets.  Its a risk because you may waste your valuable paper, but then you may find an uber weapon in the process.

[KDR_11k]

The problem is that you very likely won't find anyhing at all since there's pretty much infinite combinations. Unless you get hints there's no way of guessing a shape, especially since shape detection is pretty inaccurate, if someone draws everything right but the blade is a cm to short it won't work. And without error feedback the person would only know that the shape he drew isn't it and would have about a million possible variables he could change. If you drew a sword and got an error as a result, will you try to vary all of the lines a bit until it tells you you've discovered something?

[Spak-Spang]

KDR:  Yeah that is true.  And thus possibly why a game like this hasn't been attempted.  Many of the more interesting aspects of the game would be harder to make.

[Switchblade Cross]

These are some good ideas.  I like the one about "artists" acting as smiths.

For the record.  My idea was not that you should draw exactly the item as it will look in-game, but rather have a rudimentary symbol for diffrent items. Such as a basic looking t-shirtstanding for armour.  Or a basic looking sword standing for weapons.  The actual in-game look of an item would be more dertemined by the item's atributes...

[Spak-Spang]

I really like the Artist idea...it allows you to tune equipment.

Hmmm, the symbol idea for weapons,items, and such would allow you to have easier hidden items based on symbols.

[KDR_11k]

Determined by the item's attributes? Well, what determines the attributes? I hope it's drawing accuracy, because material alone would make the drawing part superfluous (since the program already knows what you want at an earlier point). Hm, symbols (though simpler than what you showed there, take detection accuracy into account), yes, but maybe abolish paper types in turn (i.e. you don't need "sword paper" to make a sword, just your desired paper type). Hm, perhaps a 50% variation in damage depending on your accuracy and at very high accuracy it gets special attributes...