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Game plan for Hero's Quest

first of all the name hero's quest instead of hero quest cause milton bradley might get cut at me for using their name. 

Anyway that can all be changed soon enough.

Game setting:
Set in a medieval fantasy world where creatures of the dark abound across the land, adventure is born. Play as one of a set 

of characters each with their own weapon sets and abilities. Learn new skills and manouvers as your character advances 

throughout the game, battling fierce orcs, lowly goblins, and even the undead. the players will be whisked away with stunning 

3d graphics ( ;) ) that place them in the heart of a greenskin stronghold, to the depths of a witchlords tomb, to even open 

terrain and towns. travel across the land is made simple as a click on the map will automatically take the players to the 

spot they want. Search for treasure in objects from the heroquest board game, such as tables, book shelves and even the 

treasure chests. Will the brave adventurers be able to stop the evil forces of chaos from destroying their land?


game details:

fighting:
Fighting will be set in real time, each character will have its own weapons available, aswell as the ability to gain new 

weapons or pick up their weapon set off a dead enemy. The original board game consisted of rolling specially marked dice in 

attack and defense, however, using the games fighting system, different controls will set how the character fights, there 

will be the average slash (used in concession can make combos) and defend (used to block incoming attacks : see battle 

sense).Combat is also context sensitive, for instance, as the dwarf (or other small character) you have teh ability to jump 

onto objects, such as a table, in dungeons. From that height, instead of slashing about like normal, the attack will come 

from above, slamming down onto an enemie's head. Enemies will also have a body recognition system, and react to blows 

relative to where they were actually hit, for instance, slashing a goblin across the chest, will make the goblin die, 

clutching at the wound on his chest, cutting off its head however, will make the body fall limp and the head roll along the 

floor. Yes, there is a lot of violence and gore in this game :).

Main 4 characters and their fighting styles:

Barbarian:
The barbarian is a large human warrior. He/she fights using large swords, and can have the ability to use a double axe. The 

barbarian does not use a shield, as most of the time they will use two handed swords and not be able to wear a shield, they 

may however use some degree of armor, although platemail will be unavailable to them, their body strength more than makes up 

for this. As a starting barbarian, you will be set with the broadsword, this weapon allows for a normal horizontal and 

vertical slash, and will mix both these with a diagonal slash in a combo. Secondary attack for the barbarian is throttle, 

where depending on level and strength, a barbarian will pick up a creature by the throat, choking him, from there, primary 

attack will skewer the creature with your blade, whereas secondary attack again will throw the creature at the nearest hard 

surface (usually a wall). Throwing the creature may not necessarily kill it, though small creatures may die from it, larger 

creatures arent thrown as far and are only stunned. The barbarian has no throwable weapons, though they may throw moveable 

objects like chairs if available, aswell as torches. Barbarians have access to all single big swords, and also the double 

axe.

Dwarf:
The dwarf is a short stout warrior. Born in the depths of mountain cities they are strong and fierce. They have a hatred for 

greenskins due to past history between the two races. Dwarves are talented at using axes and hammers, as a starting dwarf, 

you get to choose which style you prefer, although during the game you may use either, you will be more proficient with the 

one you had selected at the start.The axe allows for a diagonal chop, or as a secondary attack, you may try and lop off an 

enemies limb, however axes are not good defensive items, and can only be used to parry. Hammers allow for crushing attacks, 

these are vertical attacks, and can sometimes swipe horizontal to send a foe flying across the room (in a combo move). 

Secondary attack with the hammer is a jab in teh stomach, set to stun an enemy for a short amount of time and also to push 

them away from the character. Dwarves also can collect throwing axes or hammers, these are small versions of their set and 

can be thrown at a distant enemy, causing damage. Dwarves may also use a shield, provided they are using a one handed weapon. 

Dwarves have access to , axes and hammers, aswell as the short sword.


Elf:
The elves are a tall and slender race, with some knowledge of the mystical arts. They are great warriors and tend to use dual 

weapon fighting, usually two short or long swords and sometimes a mix. Dual weapon fighting allows for an array of combos, a 

primary attack will slash out with both weapons in same or different directions, (context wise), and can be used in 

concession to achieve the blade dance combo,secondary attack will allow the elf to cast a readied spell.The elf is also 

skilled with a bow, and may use this as a ranged attack, however they must change between their swords and bow to use it, 

both cannot be equipped at teh same time, although the bow may be dropped to quicken the drawing of swords in a time of 

emergency. Elves do not use shields, instead they use their nimbleness to avoid blows and parry with their dual swords. Elves 

have access to the nimble swords, eg rapiers and single handed blades, aswell as bows. Also they have access to low tier 

spells.


Wizard:
 The wizard is a human, feeble in strength, yet powerful of mind. All Wizards carry a staff, this can be used as a 

bludgeoning weapon, however is not the most strongest weapon in combat. Wizards rely on their spell power to defeat enemies, 

however their spells are limited and can weaken the mind, so they prefer to attack with low force spells. Primary attack will 

cause the wizard to bash with his staff (or slash when using a bladed staff), and secondary attack will send a bolt of force 

at an enemy, injuring it as a normal blade would. The wizard also gets to use magic from his selected pool, which will be 

selected when the character is made and can be changed between adventures or at a town magery. A wizard does not get a ranged 

weapon ability as their spells can be cast at range. Wizards have access to staves and bladed staves aswell as all magic 

spells.


they are the four main characters that will be playable, for now that is all that i think will be available, however i might 

add a few more characters, or even make the player choose  their own character style. for now this will do.


Battle sense:
This is an ability all adventureres have, it works by alerting a player that his character is about to be attacked, if the 

character presses their defend button at the correct time, they will dodge/block/parry the blow. (this has been done before 

in games, spider man 2 the movie has it for example.) This makes it a bit easier during combat for a player to stay alive. 

However battle sense starts out at a low level, only allowing one warning at a time, in combat with multiple enemies it will 

only alert you to one attack, as you increase in skill your battle sense will increase aswell, alerting you to multiple 

attacks. The player will be alerted by a redish sign above his head aswell as a noise.


ok hopefully that explains the realtime combat im looking for, i will get to work on character abilities now.

game setup for hero's quest, continued:


Character abilities:

Each character will have special abilities, this is not to say that you cannot finish the game without every character in play, these just benefit the player depending on who he chooses, and mostly allow different characters to get to secret places or bonus areas. These abilities can be trigger abilities or always on, for example the search for traps ability for the dwarf is selected when searching a room with the dwarf, where the find secret door is always on for the elf.


Barbarian:
The barbarian is a tough strong warrior, s/he has two abilities based on this strentgh. the first is leap, the barbarian has an extra ordinary jump, he/she can leap great distances, wether it be over a crevase to set up a rope for teammates to cross, or across a room to an escaping enemy, this ability does not switch on or off, it is activated by pressing jump and forward at the same time. The second is ram, the barbarian can select to ram down a door to surprise what may be inside, or if the door is locked and no one can open it. this option is available when a barbarian is at a closed door in the door option menu, be warned some doors are stronger than you are, and will repel the barbarian and also alert those inside.


Dwarf:
The dwarf is short and stout, this gives them a feat that none of the tall folk can use in most dungeons. The dwarf can leap onto tables and other benchlike objects in a dungeon with an average height ceiling, (because he can stand on it without hitting his head). from this vantage point, he can match most of the taller foes in the game, giving him a bonus to his attacks. also, because the dwarf is shorter than most other adventurers, he can travel through goblin tunnels with ease, giving him access to many new rooms and special switches to open areas for his team mates.The dwarf also has the ability to search for traps and disarm them, when a trap is spotted, the dwarf can near the trap and the option to disarm will be available, also when searching objects for treasure, the dwarf may choose to search for and disarm traps, but be warned, some traps are harder to disarm than the dwarf can handle.


Elf:
The elf is a nimble creature, he/she can use this nimbleness to move faster than others, when this ability is selected, for a short time (depending on skill level) the elf can move and attack faster than his enemies and friends, allowing him more attacks, or a more easier way to escape danger. The elf is also very receptive, and as such can spot secret doors just by walking near them. this ability is always on. An elf is also very accurate, they have the finnese ability, when commiting to a delicate task, they may choose finnesse, this gives them an extra bonus to what they are doing, for instance, when trying to shoot a rope from a distance, the elf can select finnesse to give them a straighter shot with the bow, or when mixing amount sof sand to solve traps/puzzle, they may select finnesse to aid them. this ability can only be used a limited amount per adventure, and lasts only for the action used.


wizard:
Casting spells is difficult business, so every wizard is trained in the ability to cast spells without failing. this ability is constant unless they are magically attacked by an enfeeblement spell and lose this ability for the duration of the enfeeblment.Being strong of mind, when a puzzle arises needeing the solving of a riddle or other written traps/puzzles, the wizard may scry for a hint, or in the instance of deciphering a worded document of another language, the wizard will automatically understand what is written on it. Scrying is an option that will appear at the needed instance, whereas know language will appear instantaneously.



these are some of the abilities that i can think of at the moment. i may change/add more later. And with the introduction of new characters might add more too.

game system continued:


Searching for traps and treasure:

After a battle has been fought with any enemies in a room, and there are no 

more enemies or flags triggered in the room, the players may approach objects 

and attempt to search for traps or treasure. searching for traps helps to 

negate getting a trap card when searching for treasure on an object. When a 

character searches an object for treasure, a random card is displayed from the 

game pile (yes i will have copies of the original gam edeck transferred into an 

electronic visual format). the card will come up in the middle of the screen to 

show the player what they have found, but beware, tehre are wandering monster 

cards, if pulled, a monster of the dungeons setting choice will appear behind 

the character, if followed by other players, they will see a monster fade in 

behind the player and may attack as soon as the monster is fully formed.

Searching for traps in a room/hallway;

A player using the dwarf character may use their search for traps ability. to 

do this, they must first be in the room they want to search, then they will 

automatically search a five square radius around them for traps, in a hallway 

they will search five blocks ahead and behind for cave in or pit traps.the 

search will take 5 seconds, where the player cannot make any other action, 

hence they cannot search for traps if there are enemies in teh same room or 

nearby.  

Collecting weapons:

A player may change between weapons during the game, as long as they are within 

their character set. For instance, a dwarf will be able to pick up discarded 

axes, but cannot pick up a two handed sword. There is a limited amount of 

weapons that can be carried, for instance, a dwarf may carry a shiel, a single 

handed axe, and a double axe at the same time, aswell as a numbe rof throwing 

axes. however if they find a better axe, they will drop the axe of that type 

they are carrying. Eg, they will drop a rusty single handed axe for a steel 

single handed axe, not the double axe they are carrying. Weapons can be found 

dropped by enemies, or just as treasure from a dungeon, aswell as being 

purchased from a town when the right experience level is met.

Experience and levelling:
Each time a kill i smade, a certain amount of experience points will go to 

whomever killed the creature. This amount is based on the creature type killed, 

the stronger the creature the more exp gained from the kill. if two players are 

battling the same creature the exp will go to the person who struck the fatal 

blow. at the end of an adventure the exp and gold is tallied up, and levels are 

gained if the right amounts are met. levels gain the player new abilities, and 

the chance to raise stats of their character, aswell as unlock certain items 

from the towns stores or training dens.

Plan of attack:

Ok well I have started out witha few models while I wait till I 

get dbpro, however I want this to be a community project, as it 

will be available to all the db community for free anyway, plus 

with my lack of coding skills (the best i can do is make a 3d 

object move around a matrix, and even then i copy code from the 

tutorial). So there is no reason that no coding can be done 

now.


first step:
We have some test models to be placed in a world, i intend on 

checking out Van-B's world editor that he is making for the tgc 

comp, which hopefully will be finished by the end of the month, 

but we could do a few tests to see the scale of the models and 

how they need to be changed. jsut a basic room scene with a 

first person fly mode can be done rather easily (I could 

probably code it myself as i've done some object testing 

before, but i dont have dbpro :'( ).

Once the objects have been tested and resized etc, its time to 

get a test engine running.

Second step: test engine

First we will have to agree on the kind of engine, I picture 

teh game as a 3d 3rd person adventure, with a real time combat 

system, so this means for a test engine we will have to build a 

level (comprising of a decent sized room filled with some 

objects). Then we will have to get our test models of player 

entities as well as computer controlled entities, such as 

enemies. I can do animation for these entities however I will 

require a built in animator, as I have tried many different 

animation programs and the only one i have excelled at was an 

old .x animator by gc eclipse, that was a long time ago too but 

i remember just how easy it was to edit the keyframes and have 

them written to the .x file. I wouldnt expect much from the 

animator, just the ability to set keyframes, and some other way 

of moving parts instead of a bone structure, possibly mesh 

deformation if thats the right thing? or maybe setting the 

models using limbs im not too sure how that would all work. 

Anyway once we have animated models, we can place them in our 

test world, then after setting up some basic controls for the 

player entity, we could make a test run of the player running 

towards a target and attacking. then we would need to make the 

enemy entity register the hit.


Once this is done, we need to tweak a few bits to add in teh 

extra code and test that.

step 3: testing the extra tweaks
As I have said in earlier texts, there will be several 

characters with different fighting styles and weapons, during 

the test we can use teh same model, however we will need to 

test the different fighting styles an dweapons, which can be 

done using some sort of gui where upon loading the test level 

the user can select which weapon setup they want to test. also, 

when we get the enemy registering the hit, we need to apply a 

hit locator, so we can create things like animations where the 

enemy responds to where it has been hit, and also severed 

limbs, although the actual severing of limbs will come later in 

teh tweak testing. After testing the response of the enemy and 

the different weapons, we will need to tackle the ai of the 

enemy. to do this we may need to add an extra room blocked by a 

door, to make sure teh enemy wont attack the player while in an 

adjacent room unless the door is opened. also after working out 

the ai and the attacking of the enemy, we will need to test out 

the battle awareness system, to let teh player know he is about 

to be attacked. Soon i could probably write up the algorithyms 

for this system as it shouldnt be hard to implement. once these 

have been done, we will need to add interaction with world 

objects, such as jumping onto tables and changing attack 

pattern based on world height. once that has been solved, its 

time to move onto sound and how that interacts in the game. 

This will utilize the second room, so we must make sure there 

is another room by now. sounds will be implemented with 

actions, such as sword swings and hits, blade on flesh/armor 

and blade on blade, aswell as verbal sounds, such as screaming 

and taunting. then object interaction sounds.After the base 

sound work is down, we will need to work on door interaction, 

and the sounds that may be created with certain options, and 

how that affects enemy entities in the room. eg sounds will set 

teh enemies to alert and they will wait to ambush the players 

that enter the room. there may be a few more tweaks that will 

need to be done, but thats all i can think of atm.

the next step will be to implement the search for 

treasure/traps system.

step 4: search system
This shouldnt take too much time, but is neccessary. Using the 

objects in room 1, the player must be able to walk up to an 

object and be given the option to search for either traps or 

treasure. searching for traps will notify the player of a set 

trap as listed on teh world map, or reduce the risk of pulling 

a trap card on searching for treasure.

after the search system is in place, the next step is 

abilities.

step 5: abilities
Each character type will have different abilities, however we 

can just mash these abilities into the one character for 

testing purposes, thing slike leap and other constant abilities 

will be tested first, then we will need a gui for using other 

non constant abilities, also we may need to change the room 

structure somewhat to test abilities.

step 6: magic system

yes everyone dreads it, but loves it at the same time. We will 

need to database the different spells and their affects. I can 

compile all the spells and if given a dtabase program should be 

able to quickly pick up how to store them correctly with their 

different figures. then implementing it into teh attack system 

of teh game, and making animations for casting aswell as adding 

the new affects with either a particle engine or using a 3d 

object and making the special effects. this will be worked out 

at a later date as to how we will implement spells into teh 

game. Once implemented though, our player character again will 

be used to test spells out on objects and enemies etc.

step 7: once all things are in place, its time to build a 

bigger test world, comprising of several rooms, also the 

campaign editor, starting as a basic level editor, we must 

build a way to set special settings for different areas and 

triggers for events. after working on this and getting it set 

up right, we can use this base to create a campaign editor, 

that lets you build several levels and link them together, 

aswell as allowing to build towns and outside levels, with town 

triggers for shops etc, which will be another system to work on 

too. Once the campaign editor is built, we are ready to create 

our worlds, here the game work will be split, we will have 

those buildign up the story and worlds for teh solo and 

multiplayer campaigns, and the others will work on fine tuning 

the test engine and adding in the rest of the characters.

step8a: World building
Once the campaign editor is made, and all enemies and player 

entities can be listed (they don't have to be placed in game 

yet, just a listing on the world editor so when they are 

implemented they will automatically fit in) a small group can 

work on building the games world and scenarios.

step 8 b: finsihing off the test engine

Ok this will be where the rest of the enemies and player 

characters are implemented into the test engine, once they are 

implemented we can set their statistics and weapon details etc. 

once they are set up, the game is near done, however they will 

be thoroughly tested to make sure there are no carried over 

glitches from transferring statistics, and the original test 

model must be taken out as to not create some uber-character. 

after this, we may wish to fine tune the surroundings by 

changing the objects to better modelled ones, this must be done 

in conjunction with group a the world builders to make sure 

compatability between the new objects and the world editor is 

100% fine. After that is all sorted, the world builders will 

devise a small campaign to test out the boundaries (error 

testing) of the characters in solo mode and in multiplayer 

mode. THIS WILL BE THE FINAL TEST, to make sure that all the 

systems are working together fine, and that there is no 

conflicts between different aspects of the game, aswell as 

getting an idea of how to set up future levels for difficulty 

etcafter this test is done, and bugs have been ironed out, it's 

time to optimize graphics and coding. making things run as fast 

as possible, but still show off just how good db can be. I'm 

thinking here using a particle engine we could add mist clouds 

in certain areas, or even dust clouds in dusty areas, also teh 

flames for the wall torches will need to be done. Basically 

just adding things to help make the game more visually 

appealing. this must also be done with some conjunction with 

group a, to add anything new they may need to the editor so 

they can place the particle animations int eh right spots etc.


Once the sprucing up has been done, and the campaigns are done, 

it's time to move from the test engine to the now full engine, 

basically that will be done during the sprucing up of the game 

wth adding the particles and fixing up the code. Then a gui 

will be designed for the startign screen, (i can handle some 

graphics for the title screen etc thats not too hard). This 

will be left till last because of its easyness aswell as once 

everything is in place we know how to model the starting screen 

to allow access to all wanted areas etc. I would liek to 

release this as freeware for all db users, however due to the 

intensity of this game and the work required this may not fit 

wel with some of the people who help, so after the game is 

finished we will all confer onwhat kind of pricing we want for 

the game, however of course all those involved in making the 

game will recieve a free copy. As said before, this is a very 

intricate game requiring a lot of work, however I will be on 

sick benefit for the next few months, and i can an dwill try my 

best to devote all my time (save for two days of the week) to 

making this game, however i will need teh help of the entire db 

community to supply tips, some help with the coding, and also 

some help with other things like some graphics work sound and 

music management etc. THis project is open to all db users and 

I will strive to supply all the test engine and material to teh 

community as best I can, but i do ask that in return you people 

help out, and anyone who wants to share the workload with me 

you are more than welcome to join the team as I know that with 

my skills I will not be able to complete this game in the few 

months I have, however if everyone chips in, we can have a 

decent engine up and running in that time, and then it will 

only take some hobby time to work out the rest of it, the major 

milestone in this project is the battle engine, everything else 

are just minor stones, save for the magic system which would be 

the next milestone aswell as enemy ai. But anyway enough from 

me, Again if anyone wants to help just reply to the thread with 

how you want to help out, and anything is appreciated guys, 

from just tips to help with coding. <:D