Why develop this game?
In 2020, when I just switched to the Computer Game Science major, I take my first game development course and worked with my classmates to develop a visual novel game called "Shanghai1920". As the main artist and plot designer, I spent a lot of time and effort on the game. With the idea of wanting more people to see the story I wrote, I uploaded "Shanghai1920" to Steam. Shortly after, I received some reviews, mostly positive, but there were also some negative ones. Some people commented that they wanted to see a sequel. Even if it was just one or two people, it was a great encouragement to me. So, I decided to make a sequel, which is called "Shanghai1920-XZ". XZ stands for the initials of the main character Liu Xingzhe, which means that the game is from his perspective. Not only Liu Xingzhe, but I also designed independent stories for all the important characters in the game. If there is a chance, I hope to make games with other characters as the main protagonist, so that players can experience this fantastic Republic of China fantasy tale from different perspectives
Game genre: 2.5D action role-playing game.
Unlike traditional 2.5D games like Dungeon Fighter Online or Icy, where the Z-axis is calculated in a 2D game, we use 2D art placed directly in a 3D scene. This approach has the advantage of simplifying our calculations, as we can directly position our GameObjects in 3D space with three-dimensional coordinates (x, y, z). This greatly reduces our development difficulties, especially in implementing collision detection or combat interactions.
In addition, we can even use 3D lighting and shadows to render these 2D artworks, giving players a novel gaming experience. However, this approach also brings many challenges, such as the fact that many 2D art pieces have a perspective effect (such as when a character is standing still, the front and back feet are not on the same horizontal line), which often causes problems with rendering shadows, making characters look like they are floating on the ground.
Moreover, since we don't have meshes, we can only use cube or capsule-shaped colliders as collision bodies for characters or scene objects, which makes the placement of scene objects a constant process of testing. But overall, I believe that this is a novel attempt, and the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Stay tuned for the final product!
Narrative style
The narrative style of the game is similar to Resident Evil. The game will always give players a clear objective through CG or mission guidance, telling players what to do next. However, players can also choose to stay in a certain place longer, solve puzzles, and explore more scenes to collect more items. There are also many hidden elements and side storylines designed in the game, which players can explore on their own to unlock rare storylines and items. Additionally, player choices made during the game (occasional dialogue options) and whether they collect certain items or clues will affect the game's ending.
System/Combat Design - Skill System
The skill system is a very interesting design in games. In the game, players have two attack modes, guns and swords, and I designed three basic skills for each attack mode. Each basic skill can be expanded into three different branches, each branch having two skills. Players need to learn the previous skill before they can continue to learn the next one. Learning higher-level skills requires more skill points. The inspiration for this system comes from the TP skills in Dungeon and Fighter. Skill branches not only improve the damage of the skill, but completely transform the form of the skill or add additional special effects. For example, sword skill 2, "Draw Sword": after charging, perform a high-damage slash attack forward that can knock back enemies. Its three branches respectively allow the player to launch sword energy, teleport behind enemies, and stun enemies. By combining different skills, players can have completely different combat experiences. For example, players who like to consume enemies from a distance can learn various consumption-type skills, while players who like stylish melee combos can choose to match various abnormal status and displacement skills. For different skills, we also need to design their damage multiplier, cooldown time, and skill point cost to ensure that there are no overly powerful skills. This allows the combination of skills to be more strategic rather than blindly learning the strongest skills, allowing players to enjoy the fun of thinking about how to combine skills and gain a sense of achievement.
Combat Design-Energy System (Defend/Roll)
As a combat exploration game, I want to add some hardcore elements to the game, so I thought of the Defend and Evade system in Dark Souls. In the game, players can also roll and defend, which will consume Energy. Unlike Dark Souls, the Energy in this game is not a trainable attribute, but a fixed value of 100, as the character's attacks and running do not consume Energy. Energy will recover over time, and when players deplete/overdraft Energy, the character will enter an exhausted state and will not recover Energy for two seconds. Each roll will consume 50 Energy, which means that players can roll three times in a row (because Energy will automatically recover during the rolling process), which will lead to Energy overdraft and enter a period of exhaustion. Assuming the player has enough Energy. When players are in a Defending state and receive an attack, Energy will be reduced based on the ratio of the received damage to the maximum health, and the received damage will be reduced to 10%. If Energy is not enough to withstand the damage, the player will enter a broken shield and exhausted state, and the damage will be increased by 1.2 times. What's even cooler and more hardcore is that we have designed a perfect Defend/Evade system. When players roll or defend at the moment they are hit (within 0.1 seconds), a perfect roll/Defend will be triggered, and all Energy will be restored. In the Defend state, players will not take damage and the time will slow down for 1 second. If the player presses the attack button immediately, a perfect counterattack will be triggered, dealing high damage and stunning the enemy. This undoubtedly adds more operational space for hardcore players, and in dealing with Boss-level battles, this will be a very important and useful skill.
System/Combat/Numeric Design - Inventory/Equipment System
Inventory System
In the game, players can collect various types of items in the scene, which will be stored in their backpack. Items are divided into: props - used to restore health or mana, remove abnormal status, and help in combat; crystals - can be equipped on weapons or worn as accessories, adding attributes to players; materials - some quest items; and important items - some quest items or precious items, such as joss stick for offering. These items are also divided into different grades: common, good, rare, epic, and legendary. Items of different grades will have different item frames to make it easier for players to identify them. At the same time, the first time an item is added to the backpack, it will have a "new" tag, so that players can know which items are picked up for the first time. In addition, players can place consumables in the consumable shortcut bar at the lower left corner and use them quickly in combat.
Equipment System
In the game, the equipment is a type of thing called "crystal". Crystals can be worn as accessories or embedded in guns/swords. Players have two accessory equipment slots and one crystal inlay slot for each gun and sword. Inlay-type crystals generally only work for the corresponding weapon, for example, they have a chance to trigger xxx when using a sword attack.
In addition to rarity, crystals also have a grade and level system. The grade system affects the crystal's special effect properties, such as increasing the probability of triggering special effects. There are five grades of crystals: D/C/B/A/S, and players can improve the equipment's grade through fusion:
D+:
D: 70%
other: 100%
C+:
D: 30%
C: 60%
B: 80%
other: 100%
B+:
D: 10%
C: 20%
B: 50%
A: 70%
S: 100%
A+:
D: 5%
C: 10%
B: 30%
A: 50%
S: 70%
When the synthesis fails, the equipment's grade will be lowered by one.
The level system affects the basic attributes of the equipment, such as adding the player's physical attack power. Increasing the level can increase the added value. There are 10 levels of crystals from 1 to 10, and players can improve the level of other crystals by synthesizing unwanted crystals.
Combat Design-Enemy AI design
We used a visual behavior tree editing plugin in Unity to design the AI for the enemies. Although different enemies may have different criteria for selecting their attack methods, their logic for decision-making is similar.
For regular enemies, they patrol along a pre-set route if the player is not detected. When the player appears within their field of view, they will roar and enter a state of detecting the player. The roar will attract nearby enemies and turn them into a state of detecting the player as well.
Once the enemy detects the player, they will prioritize attacking. After each attack, based on their aggressiveness index, they will decide whether to idle or continue attacking. The higher the aggressiveness index, the more likely they will choose to attack. When idle, the enemy will randomly move facing the player for a duration of 1 second (which can be adjusted). To prevent the enemy from being idle for too long, we set a variable: maximum idle times. When the enemy reaches the maximum number of consecutive idle times, they will definitely choose to attack next time.
Regular enemies usually have at least three attack methods: close-range attack, long-range attack, and skill. When the enemy chooses to attack, they will first determine whether to use their skill. Whether they use their skill is also related to their aggressiveness index, the higher the index, the more likely they will use their skill. Meanwhile, powerful skills have a built-in cooldown time, and if the skill is in cooldown, they will not use it. If the enemy chooses not to use their skill, they will determine whether to use a close-range attack or a long-range attack based on the distance to the player. They will then pursue the player until they are within attacking range and then launch their attack.
System Design-Monster Generation/Drop System
Monster Generation
The monsters in the game are not placed directly in the scene, but are generated individually by various spawning points in the scene. At these spawning points, we can set the level of the summoned monsters, the types of monsters that can be summoned, and the probability of each type of monster being summoned. This means that the spawning points will randomly generate monsters based on these settings, which undoubtedly adds more randomness and replayability to the game. When the player rests at a statue, these spawning points will destroy the generated monsters and generate a new monster the next time the player enters the scene.
Drop System
We can set up the possible items that each monster may drop, as well as the probability of each item dropping. When a monster is defeated, the game will randomly generate drops based on the preset values.