When You Hear The Bell Ring [Suspense] [Game]

[azureXtwilight]

I agree with lordshadowisle, but I wish it can be longer, hey, that's what a save game is about XDD
How many characters/other players are involved?

[AlgaeDrone]

I agree with lordshadowisle, but I wish it can be longer, hey, that's what a save game is about XDD
How many characters/other players are involved?

Breaking news! In response to new information that some of my ideas for randomizing large portions of the game are feasible, I'm happy to announce a new plan.

Currently I'm working on the idea that there will be a Story Mode and an Arcade Mode. The Story Mode will probably be more static, with the same events unfolding on each playthrough. There will be a comparably small number of competitors - probably six total, including yourself. But the characters will actually have depth and the events will be crafted in such a way that it will hopefully be especially tense. This mode will probably be released first, as a sort of demo, since I imagine that it'll be easier to make. The Story Mode will also act as an introduction to the different elements you'll encounter in Arcade Mode. In arcade mode, I would ideally like for you to be able to choose the number of competitors you would like to face (six, nine, or twelve). Most of the elements will be entirely randomized: the opponents' luck scores, the opponent's background information, the opponents' personality traits (I haven't explained these properly yet - essentially each opponent gets a unique trait that describes their behavior, like "trustworthy" or "coward"), who gets the loaded pistol, who is shot, etc etc.

It's probably better if the game was short, and more of a game than a visual novel. It wouldn't be very satisfying if you invested the whole afternoon plotting and strategizing, and end up losing simply because the final opponent (who has a vastly lower luck score) 'happens' to have the loaded gun!

In that sense, yeah, recording high scores (cash remaining, rounds survived, people killed personally ) seems to be a good idea. It makes achievement quantifiable, instead of being just win/lose.

I also have been working on a list of Achievements and Stats that the game would record. I was about to post them here, but they're pretty long and they'll probably change over time.

[AlgaeDrone]

Hi everyone, this is still going on, it's just that that everything always seems to get very busy at once.

It anyone wants to help with a little bit of brainstorming, here's something that would help a lot. All of your opponents in this game have a unique personality trait that affects how they behave. If you have any ideas on what some of these should be, I'd love to hear them. Here are a few I was thinking of:

• Cowardly - This person is more likely to drop out of the competition.
  Fearless - This person will never submit to blackmail.
  Greedy - This person can be more easily bribed than the other competitors.
  Insane - This person is randomly given a different personality trait during each round of the competition.
  Paranoid - This person will never aid you or other players in schemes.
  Smart - This person will always be conducting their own schemes.
  Stupid - This person will never conduct their own schemes.
  Suicidal - This person will never leave the competition, under any circumstances.
  Trustworthy - If this person agrees to aid you or another player in a scheme, they will always hold up their end of the bargain.
  Unpredictable - This person will always randomly pick who they aim at, no matter what.
  Unreliable - When this person agrees to one of your schemes, there is only a 50% chance that they will do as they are instructed.
  Vengeful - This person will typically target people who have targeted him in previous rounds.
  Weak-Willed - This person is more easily blackmailed and intimidated.

[jghibiki]

Hi everyone, this is still going on, it's just that that everything always seems to get very busy at once.

It anyone wants to help with a little bit of brainstorming, here's something that would help a lot. All of your opponents in this game have a unique personality trait that affects how they behave. If you have any ideas on what some of these should be, I'd love to hear them. Here are a few I was thinking of:

• Trustworthy - If this person agrees to aid you or another player in a scheme, they will always hold up their end of the bargain.
  Suicidal - This person will never leave the competition, under any circumstances.
  Smart - This person will always be conducting their own schemes.
  Stupid - This person will never conduct their own schemes.
  Greedy - This person can be more easily bribed than the other competitors.
  Coward - This person is more likely to drop out of the competition if threatened.
  Angry - This person will typically target people who have targeted him in previous rounds.
  Paranoid - This character will never aid you or other players in schemes.
  Fearless - This character cannot be blackmailed.

could create a spontaneous character that at the beginning of each game is randomly assigned a certain predetermined set of attributes to loop through. could give a more realistic progression, simulating, psychological changes in the character as the number of rounds increase
e.g.
set 1 - degenerative - portrays attributes that seem to cause a digression in the CPU's "psychological health"
round 1 - smart
round 2 - stupid
round 3 - paranoid
ect.

set 2 - crescendo - increases in attributes that simulate either extreme confidence, or degeneration into insanity
round 1 - smart
round 2 - fearless
round 3 - suicidal

[AlgaeDrone]

I've updated my list of personality traits, seen here:

• Cowardly - This person is more likely to drop out of the competition.
  Fearless - This person will never submit to blackmail.
  Greedy - This person can be more easily bribed than the other competitors.
  Insane - This person is randomly given a different personality trait during each round of the competition.
  Paranoid - This person will never aid you or other players in schemes.
  Smart - This person will always be conducting their own schemes.
  Stupid - This person will never conduct their own schemes.
  Suicidal - This person will never leave the competition, under any circumstances.
  Trustworthy - If this person agrees to aid you or another player in a scheme, they will always hold up their end of the bargain.
  Unpredictable - This person will always randomly pick who they aim at, no matter what.
  Unreliable - When this person agrees to one of your schemes, there is only a 50% chance that they will do as they are instructed.
  Vengeful - This person will typically target people who have targeted him in previous rounds.
  Weak-Willed - This person is more easily blackmailed and intimidated.

And I've also slightly updated the list of Schemes on the front page to include different categories.

could create a spontaneous character that at the beginning of each game is randomly assigned a certain predetermined set of attributes to loop through. could give a more realistic progression, simulating, psychological changes in the character as the number of rounds increase

That is interesting. But one potential problem is that this is all based around the idea that you can research your opponents' personality traits and learn how they're going to behave. It might be hard to completely explain the intricacies of an NPC having a set of behaviors that they do ovr the course of several rounds, instead of just having one personality trait for each NPC.

But I do like the idea of a player having a different personality trait for each round. So I added the "Insane" trait based around that idea, for now.

[RunicV]

Just wanted to pop in and say that this looks like an interesting game. I love the concept and idea of it.

I wish you the best of luck in creating this game.

[Arowana]

Ooh, I'm really looking forward to this! I've always wanted to do a "survival game" with tons of potential alliances, backstabbing, and strategy combos, but the sheer amount of branching + modularity has always intimidated me. So major props to you for finding a cool and clever way to tackle it!

Love the idea of the different traits and strategies. This sounds like it could be a pretty interesting exercise in game theory, actually - I'm reminded slightly of Axelrod's Prisoner's Dilemma tournaments, though of course the game here is much more complex. Heh, I'm kind of interested now if "optimal" strategies for this game arise under certain conditions and if you could do any simulations to explore this.

As for the "no saves" idea, maybe you could disable saving in "Arcade Mode," but allow it in "Story Mode"? Though if "Story Mode" really isn't that long, I guess it's not that big a deal.

[AlgaeDrone]

Let's see, I've got a few things.

Updates:
I rewrote parts of the first post, mainly the introduction, to make it a little more clear and a little less stupid-sounding. And the format section, to reflect the arcade and story modes. I also included a very important update that I've neglected to mention in this thread up until now. It is under the "Actions" section (this is the renamed "Schemes" section) - and it refers to the time system. All of your major actions, such as research and schemes, take place during the short intermissions between rounds. These breaks are only a few minutes long, and each action that you can take up uses up a certain number of minutes. This is similar to an "action points" system that you might see in an RPG or something for performing actions.

Coming Soon:
Unfortunately, I've been busy with a lot of other stuff recently, but now I'm almost done with an ultra-complex, but hopefully understandable, flowchart that should explain the different elements of the Arcade Mode. I don't see any problem with revealing in public once it's done, so you have that to look forward to. it will give a really in-depth look into the different elements of the game. Also, soon I'd like to change the image for the title screen at the bottom of the first post, because I didn't like the font. In fact, does anyone here have good calligraphy-style handwriting?

As for the "no saves" idea, maybe you could disable saving in "Arcade Mode," but allow it in "Story Mode"? Though if "Story Mode" really isn't that long, I guess it's not that big a deal.

That might work. As it is, the beginning to the story mode would be very similar each time. My only concern would be that 1.) it currently isn't planned to be that long, although that that might change, and 2.) it's still going to have randomized elements in it (like your opponent's names) because I thought that might make it remain challenging for people even if they're replaying it, even if they died partway through, etc. And saving might get rid of that. So I dunno, there are things on both sides of it.

And yeah, I'm really glad you're excited. I'll look into that Axelrod stuff. I had been thinking that all of this goes hand and hand with that game theory stuff, although to be fair I know next to nothing about it all.

[AlgaeDrone]

Okay, there we go. Here's the first version of the flowchart of what the different elements included in the Arcade Mode will be (click to super-enlarge):



Naturally, I'm sure that there are huge problems, and if anything is confusing or poorly designed or if you have any suggestions for additions or improvements, I'd really appreciate the feedback. In fact, I already see some problems that I'm going to need to correct, but this is a start.

[jghibiki]

looks like a pretty solid flowchart, everything makes sense and it seems easy enough to follow, you might want to make an even lower level one specifically for programming, but if you think you'll be fine with this props to you

[AlgaeDrone]

Thanks, good to hear. I might be being a little too picky but I noticed a few small problems which I've now changed. Here's the updated version:

• 

And here are some of the main changes:

• This is probably the biggest mistake I made: the location of the "Background" and "Personality" sections in the main column of the flowchart were reversed. In other words, the two attributes had their titles mixed up. It's been corrected.
• Changed "Hard Mode" to "Hardcore Mode" for now. I've been informed that in video game terminology "hard" usually relates directly to the difficulty of the gameplay, and "hardcore" usually means a mode where various helpful aids are disabled. For instance, "hardcore mode" on a shooter game might not have any HUD display. So this seems more appropriate. Other possible names are are "Realistic Mode" or "Veteran Mode".
• The "Information" box has been moved to the top left of the image, and the "Media Checklist" box to the right of the title. Their previous location made them harder to see, especially when someone first looks at the image
• Under "Round" there is a section which says "In Easy Mode a diagram is shown...", which has since been changed to "In Normal Mode a diagram is shown...", because there is no "Easy Mode" in the game at the moment.
• The very bottom of the image has two categories that were both labeled "Achievements". The one on the left was supposed to be entitled "Scores".
• In the "History" subsection of "Background", there is a part that says "25% chance each". This is excessively vague and might be confusing to some people. It's been changed to "The character will randomly be assigned one of these traits".
• At the very top of the screen in the Background section, there are two bars that say "More Likely" on one end
  and "Less Likely" on the other end. This might be confusing. It was meant to show how likely the opponent is to receive each particular family trait.
• The "Other" section under the "Fugitive" history has been filled in. This was previously the only box that was left blank.

And here are some changes that still need to be made:

• I'd like to add a new game mode, in addition to Normal and Hardcore. This would be along the lines of an Easy Mode, where the game will make educated guesses about your opponents based on what research you have done. For instance, let's say that you've researched an opponent's Personality, and discovered that he has the "Greedy" personality trait. With this information, the game will inform you that the most likely History for this character to have is the "Destitute Merchant" background, and therefor he is most likely to have a luck score between 3 and 5, AND he is less likely to have "No Extended Family". I know it's complicated, but basically this mode will fill in the blanks about what attributes the opponent is likely to have.
• Also, under the number of opponents, I'd like to add an "Endless" option. This would have the player competing against five opponents, but every time that an opponent is eliminated, another new opponent with entirely different attributes shows up to take his place. The only way for the competition to end is for the player to die or withdraw.
• Possibly another mode could be added entitled "Autoplay", "Spectator", or "Gambling" mode. This part would have the competition composed entirely out of NPCs and the player would be an audience member who is gambling on the outcome of the competition. The player would still be allowed to research the various competitors during the intermission and could make bets in each round for a number of different criteria such as: who will have the loaded gun, who will be shot, who will survive, who will withdraw, who will ultimately win the entire competition,etc.
• All of the new modes mentioned above should also have their own distinct Achievements and Scores.
• Every description needs to be more in-depth and specific. For instance, most of the descriptions for the Traits are very vague. They say things like "This person is more easily threatened" but it does not specify exactly what parameters will be changed.
• I need to find a way to specify in actual percentage points how likely the opponents are to receive each of the family traits. Currently it only vaguely states that for some, competitors are "More likely to receive this trait" and that others are less likely

[Kinjo]

So I recently remembered about this game and was wondering how far it's come since I last saw it.

The flowchart looks great; I managed to update myself on the mechanics pretty quickly. I like how they work, too.

As for your new ideas: the Easy, Endless, and Spectator Modes all sounds really cool. Along with all the achievements and high scores, this would make for a LOT of replay value, and I think it would be incredible to see this finished. As complicated as the mechanics seem, I don't think it would be too ridiculously hard to actually program any of them.

That said, have you actually started on programming any of this yet? It probably is best to brainstorm all kinds of ideas first, but I honestly wouldn't mind helping out if it would mean bringing those ideas to life. I love game theory and this is really the kind of VN I would like to see completed. Either way, I really like where this is going, so keep it up!

[AlgaeDrone]

Yes, programming has officially started on the game, which is why I asked for this thread to be moved from the "Ideas" section to the "Works in Progress" section in case anyone hasn't noticed (thanks to the admins, by the way).

A very simple, playable framework for the main parts of the game has already been made, and it will be added to over time. The reason I haven't posted anything here is because I sort of feel bad about casually self-bumping my threads when there are so many other projects out there that need attention as well. So I try to wait until I have something concrete to show.

So basically here are the updates I'm working on, in order of what will come first:

• 1.) Firstly, I'm working on creating a google docs page that will show all of the different parts of the game, and their status - that is, whether they still need to be started, whether they are in progress, whether they are finished, etc.
  
  2.) After that, I will work on making a matching, updated flowchart to go along with that Google docs page. That way people can easily compare the two of them to see where a certain part will fit in with the final version of the game, and what the status of that part is.
  
  3.) Then I will start working on some potential mock-ups of what the gameplay should potentially look like in Photoshop for illustrative purposes and to help narrow down an art style.

I hope that clarifies some things. But if anyone has other questions, suggestions, comments, corrections, etc just let me know.

[Veniae]

I just want to say that this sounds brilliant. Recently, I read this manga called Liar Game which has all sorts of games where you need to outwit your opponents, etc., and this game sort of reminds me of it. So far the gameplay looks really interesting and I'm loving the concept. Also, the name is badass. I wish you the best of luck and I hope this will be released as soon as possible!

[AlgaeDrone]

All right. The status page is now up that lists most of the major parts of the game, and how far along each one is:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... PZWc#gid=0

As you can see, there's a lot of work left to do, but I guess you have to start somewhere.

Also, I'm sure that this is riddled with typos and there are probably lots of other corrections to be made, but there will be plenty of time for that in the future.