summary

From Radakan

This page is a technical summary of the design of Radakan. Follow the links (in orange) to read the details. For a less technical explanation, please see the introduction page. For the full design, please see the design document.

Contents 1 Genre 2 Focus 3 Playing motivation 4 Playing opportunities 5 Atmosphere 5.1 Visual style 6 Code 7 Mechanics 8 Setting and contents 9 User interface

Genre

Single-player 3D RPG

Focus

• Immersion
• Interaction with intelligent NPCs (both through combat and conversations). For example, attacks will make people fight or flee, instead of standing idle waiting for their turn to be slaughtered. NPCs should give a reasonable reaction even in odd cases.
• Freedom of choice
• Player has to deal with consequences of his choices.

Playing motivation

• Character improvement
• World improvement: the world adapts to actions of the player character
• Discovery of the game content

Playing opportunities

• Exploration
• Multiple optional storylines
• Survival

Atmosphere

• Dark, dangerous fantasy world
• Unique setting (see below)
• Regular in-game events will seem as if they were taken from middle ages everyday life
• No super-humans (By the way, there are no humans in Radakan.)

Visual style

• Dark, authentic (like in Oblivion) and slightly odd/alien.
• Different races will have different building styles.

Code

Radakan is written in Python, and uses Panda3D as its 3D engine.

Mechanics

Combat:

• User involvement: setting the tactical behavior (both at the start and during a battle - automatic pausing is optional)
• Visualization: cinematic, to keep the user entertained
• Frequency: low by default (no fight or a lot of fights are possible too, depending on the playing style)
• Duration: long by default (depending on the PC skill)
• Randomness: low chance for the weaker participant to win

Conversations: many options

Quests: only non-repetitive, optional, multi-path quests

Health: multi-linear: pain, health, poison, bleeding,... and calculated per limb

Skills:

• Hierarchy based
• Experience by doing the skill
• Limited, in a asymptotic way (infinite skill is required to reach the maximal skill)

Magic: Radakan will have magic, but it's considered extremely hard to perform, as spells demand substantial sacrifices. Magic is therefor very rare.

Automation (instead of redundant player input):

• Performing actions require other actions (e.g. to take an item from the ground, the player character will automatically approach it.)
• Combat (see above)
• Traveling to a given destination

Setting and contents

• Highly consistent
• Original races, vegetation and locations

User interface

Input:

• mouse controlled
• keyboard optional

Output:

• 3D visuals
• audio optional