Mother 4

[Forte]

So yeah, it's about time I get on with making a topic for this, right? Right. Let's talk about Mother 4.

I really barely know what to talk about here, but we can sum up some things about it. First and foremost, we're in direct competition with these fuckers. It's as hard to tell where their project is going as it is mine, at least, for the time being. And thing is, I don't want this to be my project. This isn't Cave Story, one man isn't going to be able to do everything for it. In fact, even if I WANTED to do everything for it, I don't have any necessary talents for something like that. I don't even have the necessary talents for SPRITING the entire thing by myself, and that's what I'm best at. So what do you do when the competition is an army and you aren't able to do everything by yourself? If you're Lucas (or Heron) then you get together some friends and fight back.

As it is currently, the story is posted here. It's right there for everyone to read. "But Forte," you say,  "why make a game from a story that's right there, where's the fun in playing through what we know will happen?" And Forte did answer:

The story written down isn't really the final version, for one thing. There's a ton of flavor text and sidequests that are gonna go into the final product. There's a ton of action scenes and exploring that got COMPLETELY ignored or written out because writing action and writing exploration gets tiresome to the reader. And there's a lot that I want to change, because while spriting, making comics, and generally thinking through the story, I find things that I would like to change. Of course, when the game comes out, there's no going back and changing it, and this is the process of story development. It started with something simple, a place to put down complex ideas that if I didn't write down, I would forget. There's other stuff that I've written down too, and this will be the thread for everyone involved to discuss characters, game dynamics, possibilities, etc et al. I'll go over some other stuff regarding that later in this post. But this should answer your question about the story being here: it's story only in name. And there's a large chunk of game missing from it. I've referred to it in passing as "post game", but the game doesn't really end at the point where the posted story ends, so "post game" is a bit of a misnomer.

Helping with this project is open to anyone. Most story details are with me and I don't really change them up all too often, but game dynamics, item suggestions, even names for NPCs and their designs can be discussed here. In fact, some important character designs are still up in the air, so members of the team will also have the ability to possibly influence the outcome of the designs of characters such as Robert, Lily, Len's parents, and other cool stuff like that.



~~~~~~~


Things to keep in mind:

The sprite style in this game is meant to favor Wind Waker, an idea formed by seeing the Wind Waker-esque mockups of Mother 3 characters, and cemented by Fenril's artwork. It keeps the simplistic style of the Mother games before it, but adds the graphical step-up that each Mother game brought with it. In terms of visuals, I wanted to make the game feel like the next logical step in a Mother game, but I wanted to make it something artful. If you've been by my sprite thread, you've seen the fruits of this labor, and I am always open for ideas to tweak them. I really hope the style itself is lovable, even if the shading or coloring is questionable.

Game Mechanics - Every game needs them, and this is no exception. From talking with Fen, and c0mp, and sometimes others, I get ideas and we elaborate on ideas. Then sometimes, there's days that I get ideas in the shower, or while eating, or whatever else. I do my best to remember to write these things down, but I forget to write them down sometimes. Fortunately, I have a good memory when it comes to this sort of thing, so I'll actually concrete them here and now for any future or current team member to comment on.

Healing items: Historically, sweet things seem to restore PSI in the mother series. Magic Pudding, Magic Tart, Magic Cake, butterflies, etc. Mother 2 was on to a really neat concept when they introduced seasonings, but the automatic use of those things was kind of... meh. Thanks to a conversation I had with c0mp, I came to what I believe is a really neat game dynamic in terms of food consumption in general. We bring back condiments and seasonings and what have you, but we make them an active "use this on this" formula. Anything can be used on anything else, of course, but only certain things make your restorative item more effective. Let's take an example:

Cup of Coffee. Heals 10HP.

Let's say we bought a packet of sugar and a packet of non-dairy powdered creamer. Then we used them both on the coffee in no particular order. Because order doesn't matter. We get:

Cup of Coffee (Cream and Sugar). Heals 20HP and 10PP.

Or we can go black with sugar.

Cup of Coffee (Sugar). Heals 10HP and 10PP.

or cream, no sugar.

Cup of Coffee (Cream). Heals 20HP.

I'm sure you get the idea. A system like this makes even mundane healing items something fun to mess with, sort of like taking your shit to Tayce T. in Paper Mario and getting amazing stuff back, except you don't have to take your stuff anywhere to do this... unless it becomes a good idea to do that.


Saving your game: The Mother series has seen a slightly different method of saving games, and got a bit of its challenge in Mother 1 and 2 by not having save locations in dungeons, unlike Final Fantasy which has them stuck in out of the way locations in dungeons. Of course, the lack of a true "overworld" in the Mother series attributed to this, and Mother 4 will be no exception. However, the phones (sort of) and frogs will get replaced by pictures. This is where the portable digital camera comes in. You start off with this while playing as Len in the opening, and it will be given to Robert as a wedding present. From here, it is passed onto Heron, and so on, in a process that, wouldn't you know it, wasn't explained in the posted story. (See what I mean about games?)

But what about when I'm playing as Lento and his crew? That's a thing, by the way, playing as them. It happens quite a bit throughout the game, which will be discussed later in this post. This is where their version of the camera comes in:

The Pocket-Held Otacoustic Novantique Electronic, or for short, the P.H.O.N.E. It's a cell phone, as you probably guessed from its name, loaded to the brim with technology but designed to look like a normal cell phone from our time. Among other features, it takes pictures, like any good phone should.

Both the phones used by the Mod 7, and the camera used by Len and later Heron, take ultra high resolution photos that, unfortunately, are so amazingly huge due to their resolution and color depth, that only a few can be stored on a device at one time (look at that amazing excuse for why you only have a few save slots). Of course you can take multiple pictures and store them in up to three save slots.

But this is like having a phone or a frog follow you around, right? Now we can save anywhere, right? Wrong! Due to TREMENDOUS OVERSIGHT, P.H.O.N.E.s and Heron's camera are not equipped with a flash! What a pain, now taking pictures INDOORS is nigh impossible! (As you can see, saving while in a "dungeon" is now eliminated as a possibility unless there is a bright enough room (sort of like finding a phone/frog in the middle of a long dungeon or so).


Switching Perspectives:

Mother 3 sort of passed you around the main characters quite a bit before landing on Lucas and party. Mother 4's gonna pass you around just about as much. But wait a minute... playing as people you end up fighting? Yessir. Let's say you're playing a segment with Allegro in your party, or possibly leading your party. You level up from a battle, give him items, equip him with different things, that's something that will carry over to fighting against him. He'll have all the stat buffs from when you played as him, added onto his boss status anyway. This doesn't necessarily make the game harder though, as you'll gain more experience, potentially get an item drop depending on the items equipped, and other benefits. Don't think you're gonna get away with easier boss fights due to underleveling your enemies before fighting them, since they all have a "lowest boss stats" set of stats. As an added bonus, any equipment and items a character has on them while you were playing as them won't go away (as long as any food items were non-perishable), so if they join your party at a later date, you will have those items back!


Battles:

After Mother 1, the series sort of developed an interesting battle system that made standard turn based battles less of a drag, and in Mother 3, introduced a musical combo system that furthered the interaction that a player has during battle. While it is definitely in its most prototype of forms, the Mother 4 battle system will hopefully further reinvent the RPG battle system, by adding environmental targets, strategic placement of your characters, and other things that you can exploit while in battle to make the battle seem a bit more than just blows exchanged back and forth until someone dies. The best way to provide an example of this is in the story version of Allegro vs Heron/Falin. Falin's equipped weapon was a knife, which she threw. The basic function of this knife is not to throw it, but throwing your weapon can be an option. Not always, and not with every weapon, but sometimes, that might be an option you encounter. You of course, need to collect your weapon again after this, so it's questionable if that's a good idea or not. Also, remember how Allegro was thrown into the glass; that's what I mean by environmental targets.  As I said, this is largely in prototype, and anyone wishing to participate in development can openly comment on this or anything else.


Experience and leveling up:

Beating things gives you experience. No questions asked. That's just the way of the world, right? So let's add another dimension to that, sort of resembling Fire Emblem: weapon leveling. Every character has an affinity weapon type. Projectile weapons, long reach melee weapons, mid range melee, two handed, whatever. To add to this, every character can equip almost any weapon they so please, but if it isn't their affinity, then they just won't perform all too well with it. However, if a character is using his or her affinity, that weapon will level up with them, until it hits a stat cap. This doesn't mean you just start with a base weapon and carry it through the game leveling it up, but it does sort of sound that way. This, like the battle system, is still deeply in prototype. Prototype probably isn't even the word for something like this, but I'm gonna use it. Balancing a weapon leveling system with the purchase of new weapons will be something to overcome for sure.


Needless to say, it's taken me so long to write this post, that I've forgotten a lot of what I needed to put into it. If there's any loose ends, anything that I mentioned earlier and neglected to mention later like I said I would mention later, point it out. Ask me questions. I really do want to answer them and clear things up. Like I said, anyone can join the development team because any form of help is still help.

[Forte]

Also, I would like to make the Mother 4 site look good and fill it with information. Site aspects are part of the development team too, and if you have ideas for content or what have you, tell me, work with me about it.

[Fenril]

I'm not in the state of mind to deeply analyze anything right now, but one thing that jumped out at me was the 'everybody can equip any weapon' thing. Now, I have this thing I do sometimes where I wish my favorite character could equip a weapon that I just think is the coolest weapon I've ever seen, but sadly they can't. But honestly, all of the Mother games pretty much told you using plain stats which equipment you needed to buy next, so would this new system take stats into consideration, and depending on the character's proficiency with said weapon, apply stat buffs/debuffs, or...?

How would the mechanics behind weapon affinities work, taking stats into consideration?
And how easy would it be for the player to discern and keep track of these affinities?

Also,

Healing items: Historically, sweet things seem to restore PSI in the mother series. Magic Pudding, Magic Tart, Magic Cake, butterflies, etc.

. . .

sweet things

butterflies

What.

[c0mp1337]

looks like sweet is an abstract term here

[Forte]

In the spirit of good game design, we sort of need to make sure that the interface for this is less complicated than learning to play EVE. I really would rather there not be a myriad of stats that a player has to keep up with, to the point that the common, busy person could pick the game up once in a while and play it to the finish without forgetting important details regarding how strong their character is.

Mother 2 and 3 had a relatively simple way of showing you who could equip what, so I think keeping that will be a good idea. Using a non-affinity weapon doesn't provide de-buffs so much as it just doesn't really do much in the way of providing buffs. Let's say that we have Heron's equipment:

Weapon: Pipe +10 attack -2 Speed

The pipe is bulky and a bit heavier, so it reduces his speed and gives him a + attack.

If we gave it to Falin, realistically, having a weapon is better than not having a weapon, but she's bad with weapons like that.

Weapon: Pipe +3 attack -2 speed.

The base downside to this pipe is less speed. The only person who can ever get over the less speed is Heron, who will level up this pipe as he uses it (Possibly, an alternative is that he levels up his affinity weapon skills so that the downside of using bulkier weapons doesn't apply to him anymore). In the case of the parentheses, leveling up your affinity weapon abilities lets you use stronger weapons with more ease. For example

Pipe: +10atk -2spd

Good Pipe +15atk -4spd

The good pipe is a great attack but has an obvious speed problem there. So, let's say:

Heron

Affinity: Long Range Melee (Pipes fall into longer weapons, so affinity type is long range melee)
(BASE)
Attack +0
Speed +0
Combo +0
???? +0 (???? denotes other buffs that may be added in the future)

When you level up this affinity, say, speed gets a point:

Speed +1

The weapons will become

Pipe: +10atk -1spd

Good Pipe +15atk -3spd

and the good pipe begins to look like a viable option. In terms of skill caps, however, maybe it's a good idea to increase speed only up to a certain point when using the pipe. Your level can only increase in the speed department as many times as you need to wear speed down for a weapon to not detract from your base speed stat (This is to say, the weapon level's speed stat does NOT affect your speed, but keeps your speed from being affected).

So at best, your standard pipe will give you two affinity speed levels, and equipping the good pipe will be a +15 attack -2 speed. From there you can get it down to -0 speed.

I feel like I may have rambled there for a bit, and not really addressed the question at hand. Tell me if I did that.

[Fenril]

So you're saying that if a weapon has any negative stats on it, a character with an affinity for it can level it up to negate the effect?
And a character that doesn't have an affinity for the weapon can't level that up, so it's better to equip characters accordingly.

Makes sense. :D

[Clockwork Pyrite]

I never actually read all the way though Mother 4 (I should probably get on that), but if characters are permanently removed for any reason, there needs to be a way to get their equipment and held items back.

[Forte]

Story related items that also happen to be held items, I can see that, but as for just equipment and such, I don't really think it's that big of a deal.

[Clockwork Pyrite]

>give character best equipment
>that you only get one of
>they die
>no way to get it back

[Forte]

I don't remember ever saying there was only one of an equipment. Even if we were to, say, include a weapon on the level of rarity of the Sword of Kings, the chances of finding it were 1 in every 256 battles with a Starman Super. Even though these odds are insane, you can still technically have two Swords of Kings in your inventory, at which point you just wasted a lot of time. And even then, only one character could equip it.

I honestly have not planned very many one shot only weapons, and the ones that I have planned out are specifically for people who most certainly do not die. Or at the very least, no one else is gonna get too much use out of it.

[Clockwork Pyrite]

I mean items that you find in a chest, are unbuyable, etc.

The Awesome Cape is a good example, or the Friend's (Ness's) Yo-Yo

It's 1/128, by the way.

[Forte]

We'll see about that further along in development, but I guess I agree that it's a good idea to keep valuable items from just poofing.

[Clockwork Pyrite]

Wow, not the Awesome Cape. The Awesome Ring.

The cape's a drop from the Colonels.

[Forte]

Also notice how the Awesome Ring is acquired very near the end of the game and is for Lucas, who at this point, you have realized is staying in your party quite permanently.

[Clockwork Pyrite]

I never meant it to be a full example.

Just an item there's only one of,