Nolsimma Tactics

Platform:

PC

Software Used:

Unity / C#, GameMaker Studio 2 / GML, Aseprite,

Duration:

4 years 4 months

Team Size:

1

Role:

Game Designer,

2D Artist, Programming

Overview

Over the last few years I have been designing and creating a tactical RPG system called Nolsimma Tactics. The design has gone through many iterations and due to the scope and external work commitments. I have been regularly coming back to the project and working on it whenver I can.

I took inspiration from games such as Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem and X-Com to design a tactics game with a lot more emphasis on a battle system that lets you play your own way. Rather than having any classes that are ‘better’ than others, the playable classes are more suited to certain play styles. I also noticed that this genre of game could take a lot of inspiration from D&D, Pathfinder and Star Finder in regards to battlefield control and manipulation, which I have been incorporating into the design.

Currently I am migrating the project from GameMaker Studio 2 to Unity.

Game Design Tasks

• Designing the galaxy that serves as the setting for the game, along with the individual planets, factions and playable alien races and their histories.

• Creating and balancing playable classes that have unique abilities and compliment each other in a variety of playstyles without any one particular party configuration being favoured.

• Designing the branching progression system that allows the player to give units specializations within their chosen class.

• Designing the upgradeable ship that the player will use as their ‘Home Base’, which will unlock future classes, abilities, allow for bigger party sizes and also introduce and progress some of the story’s sub-plots.

• Designing the battle system. Some features include stat based turn order, permadeath if a unit is not rescued in the allocated time frame and a variety of game modes and objectives for each mission.

• Designing the overworld for each planet that will be ‘Node’ based, each node will represent a different location on the planet.

Programming Tasks

• Creating the grid based movement and pathfinding.

• Making the terrain affect the pathfinding, walls and destructable obstacles can block certain routes and some tiles can have a higher move cost than others.

• Implementing AI for the enemies that is dictated by their Personality, allowing for some enemies to be more bold, ruthless or passive than others.

• Creating the inventory and equipment system that can buff or debuff the units’ stats depending on what is equipped with each class.

• Building a turn order system that updates the future turn order in real time depending on the units’ Agility stat.

• Creating a character randomizer that generates new party members that can then be hired to the Player’s crew.

• Creating a unit placement system that allows the Player to place their units on the battlefield, allowing for more tactical decisions to be made.

• Adding randomized enemy groups which are linked to each indiviudual map, which is overridden by certain missions that require set enemies to appear. This will make random encounters less predictable as each battle map could have a number of different enemies appear.

• Designing and creating UI systems to effectively show inventory, party and battle information to the Player.

2D Art Tasks

• Creating tile maps for each region of each planet.

• Creating pixel art animation sprite sheets for all 7 playable races with body, eye and hair variations which totalled over 4000 possible combinations, excluding hair colour variations.

• Creating UI menus for inventory, party management and battles.

• Designing modular character portraits that correspond to each possible character design.