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All About Tiles

Time to show off some basics! We experimented with a bitwise-bordered tile system a few months ago, similar in appearance to Civilization or XCOM, but our playtests showed that it didn’t really fit a game with such a FFT-style variable height system.

Due to that, we stripped it out and replaced it with some snazzy animated singular tiles. Much better!

Below is the tile spawning animation, slowed down. In-game it’s much snappier to minimize the amount of time the player has to wait. One of the key design philosophies we’re trying to abide by is to make a Final Fantasy Tactics-like system feel as quick and snappy as a typical Fire Emblem game.

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Draw your sword, Ra-- okay maybe not. But this is Ranhelm Keep, which is almost done. For indoor areas like this one we’ve elected to go with a pure black background, just like FFT. Since everything is visible at all times on this map, we’ll be locking the camera rotation function.  Hopefully the braziers, the indoor castle, the single enemy atop the dais, and the dark lighting don’t give you flashbacks!

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We’ve been working hard on a new iteration of the Gyovan Plains map this past month, with a new facelift on the windmills and lots more comfy grass and grain fluff.  When we ship a demo, we’ll likely use this map and one other (we haven’t revealed yet)!

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Our final entry to item week for Breaking Ba-- I mean, Vindis Saga, will be essences and substances, the chemicals of our world. Instead of driving an RV into the desert, Vindis' Alchemists manipulate the elements from the comfort of their own guilds. Essences represent liquids and vapors, substances represent solids (usually powder), and both are separated into four categories: Molten, Basic, Airy, and Aqueous. 

The Alchemist must harness his or her expert knowledge of plants, metal, salt, stones, and even wine to concoct the chemicals they require. To further make potions, that Alchemist must know which combination of essence and substance results in what -- does Airy and Airy make a healing potion? What sort of herb should I put in my Aqueous Essence if I'd like for it to cure Tiredness status effect on top of its SP restoration? Am I going to blow off my arm if I mix Molten Substance with Basic Essence? Find out when our second demo build is released!

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Welcome back for another round of item sneak peaks, this time with animal products! Ranging from milk to dung, the fruits of animal husbandry find use in both the Chef and Alchemist class, respectively. But... our crafting system is flexible! If an item is tagged as "Animal Product" and a recipe only calls for a generic "Animal Product," feel free to drop cow dung in there. After all, it's historically accurate.

To show that it has its priorities straight, Vindis Saga has three types of cheese. The first is Satter Cheese, a spicy red cheese produced in the Scarlet Highlands. Cows graze on the highlands' crimson grass and their cheese handily reflects the biome. Our second cheese is called Bairox Cheese, a bland but proud dairy product created in the central lands of Turland. The third and final one is Silheim Cheese, created in a small village in Polmany, which is to the east of Turland. The bay-colored Silheim cow was one of the first to be domesticated yet its strong-tasting cheese has only recently become popular among the nobility

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Continuing on with our item sneak peeks! Today we're showing off stones, which are materials used by the Smithy to craft components like Hammer Heads, Arrow Tips, and various other nicknacks. They further serve their purpose in the creation of Essences and Substances at the Alchemist's hands, which are used to create potions, elixirs, and draughts. 

Stone is in high demand in the world of Vindis. Since the Free Company of Nebrides, a troublesome band of violent mercenaries, has taken over the city of Highwall, its castle has fallen to disrepair. The player might strike a deal to supply these brigands with renovation materials -- or the Nebrideans may have to take it themselves from others.

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Welcome to the first part of our item sneak peeks for Vindis Saga: Tactics! This week we’ll be taking a look at metals, which are used by the Smithy class to produce components like Blades, Bits, Tips, Torsos, and Visors. Each metal has a unique property that changes its stat contribution as a crafted component, so a Copper Blade will therefore be discernible from a Glintsteel Blade not only in appearance but also statistically.

Further on, when actual weapons (and other items) are forged together from various components; a sword using a Copper Blade, Copper Pommel, and Copper Guard will be extremely different from one that uses Glintsteel as a material basis for all of those components. Get crafting!

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Attack outcome predictor! Eventually the models that pop in will have custom animations based on which class they are. 

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Complementing our previous post is the List feature, which stands opposite to Bid. The player has 10 slots with which to list items for sale, choosing a minimum asked price for each. Items do not sell immediately; at the end of each of the 7 days, the player will receive a missive at their encampment with money according to how many (if any) items have sold during the daytime. If you try to gouge prices, your items won’t sell! And conversely, being an undercutter might ensure that your stock will move quickly, but with less of a profit margin. Choose wisely!

Tentative features for the auction house include shortages and surpluses, which affect the entire 7-day playthrough. Ideally this would cause players to choose different gathering/crafting class strategies for each NewGame+, but this is something that will require extensive balancing. 

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Here’s some work in progress on the auction house!

As mentioned in our older post Modern Spirit, the auction house in this offline tactical RPG is actually inspired by MMORPG economies. Why go through all the trouble? Due to the time progression and NewGame+ emphasis in the design, the economy will grow and change as you play, which necessitates that prices fluctuate, resources grow scarce or plentiful, and the player finds their own niche. 

In this WEBM you’ll see the interface work on the Bidding portion of the Auction House, where the player navigates through categories (buttons are very WIP) like Weapons -> 1-Handed -> Sword and Materials -> Metals to find what they need. After reaching that point, the player can attempt to bid on that item; if the bid is above the seller’s minimum ask, they’ll successfully buy it!

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Transmedia Influences

As promised in the last post, this devblog will cover any books, films, TV shows, and so forth that have influenced Vindis Saga Tactics in any way. 

Yojimbo was already mentioned previously; its importance cannot be understated. The story structure set forth by Akira Kurosawa sees a ronin, effectively the most distilled form of third party possible, involve himself in a feud between the Ushitora and Seibei clans. He effectively plays one off the other through cunning and shrewdness until only he (and a large bag of coin) remain. Berserk also sees similar behavior with the Band of the Hawk increasingly involving itself in politics until its leader Griffith nearly becomes King of Midland.

Vindis Saga adopts this structure of the protagonist being involved in a band of mercenaries for two very important reasons: being a third party to the main conflict’s belligerents allows the player to choose which side is more righteous, and the life of a mercenary is usually quite violent. With those two characteristics in mind, meaningful player choice and frequent tactical battles can be emphasized. Tentatively, the name of the mercenary guild is “the Spiders,” but the player is free to rename it upon their first playthrough.

The protagonist’s Spiders aren’t the only swords for hire, however. History serves as ample inspiration with real life events sometimes being even more absurd than fantasy events. In Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire you can read about the Mamertines, a group of mercs who occupied the city of Messina at the cusp of the First Punic War between Rome and Carthage. After attacking a neutral city state, they got themselves into a tough situation and plead to Rome and Carthage equally for protection. This tiny group of unscrupulous rogues ended up sparking a major Mediterranean war between the two regional powers at the time. 

Without spoiling too much, the Mamertine analogue in Vindis Saga is the Free Company of Nebrides, a group of foreigners who left their native land after failing to be paid by their patron. They’ve taken over the city of Highwall from its rightful lord and prey on travelers in the adjacent Shufelwood.

That’s it for now!

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Here’s an idea of what the overworld looks like! Each location might be the setting for an event, depending on which day it is. 

As always, this is WIP. Everything will look better in the final version :)

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Modern Spirit

For years, I’ve heard countless people demand “where’s the next Final Fantasy Tactics?” Final Fantasy Tactics A1 came out for the Game Boy Advance in 2003 (directed by Matsuno himself), but the clamoring continued. “Where’s the true sequel?” they repeated. Final Fantasy Tactics A2 arrived five years later at the beginning of the PC indie boom, and since then we’ve seen excellent tactical offerings ranging from Shadowrun Returns, Banner Saga, Massive Chalice, Invisible Inc., Wasteland 2, and the soon-to-be Children of the Zodiarcs. Yet still, those chants continue.

What gives? None of those are bad games. I’m particularly fond of Invisible Inc. myself since it merged stealth into turn-based tactics in such a way that I’m surprised no one tried to merge those genres together before. Massive Chalice’s own Kickstarter pitch invoked Final Fantasy Tactics as an ‘inspiration’ for the game pitch alongside the venerable XCOM, the latter seeming to be a much more potent spirit. 

How much can change in a game’s design before it crosses the line from ‘inspiration’ to simple ‘reference’ or ‘easter egg’? In our last devblog post, we identified Environment, Class System, and Political Intrigue as being the primary drivers behind FFT’s success and lasting cult status. These elements are torches we carry while working on Vindis Saga Tactics, guiding us down the long and dark path of game development. Those torches, however, are from 1997 and the landscape has changed much since then; to both create a spiritual sequel and draw on the knowledge of more modern game design while keeping the spirit pure is a gargantuan task.

So what are we adding that not only retains the three aforementioned traditions but amplifies them to new heights? Four non-tactics games have strongly informed our design: Way of the Samurai (WOTS), Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (MM), Final Fantasy XI (FFXI), and Mount & Blade: Warband (M&B).

The first major improvement we’re mortaring onto this tactical wall is that of a Time-Driven Event System inspired by WOTS and MM. Specifically, Vindis Saga operates on a 7-day system subdivided further into 4 segments: Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Nighttime. At any one point (for example, Day 2 Afternoon) the player’s presented multiple events across our overworld map with which to involve themselves, Yojimbo-style, alongside a cast of exciting and eccentric characters. Participating in one event pushes the clock forward by at least one blip, so every event invokes opportunity cost. Eventually the game’s campaign will finish at the end of Day 7, leading into the game’s next driving feature.

As it’s planned out now, a single playthrough will likely be around 10 hours in length. That’s a finely-engineered number: due to our story’s political intrigue it can be described as on the mature end, and many working adults (and game journalists) don’t have time to enjoy a JRPG padded upwards to 70-100 hours. What we’ve done instead is create a surrounding structure, inspired by both WOTS and M&B, that rewards multiple NewGame+ playthroughs for those wonderful people who truly love our game. Depending on which events the player has experienced (as well as which decisions they made within those events) he or she will enjoy different endings. 

How does our NewGame+ work? I found the economic system surrounding M&B to be fascinating when I played it, with supply & demand, looting, and bandits constantly giving the player self-driven non-linear goals to pursue. We’ve flipped this structure on its head with our Retirement System: every time you reach Day 7 with your squad of 8 fighters, they’ll retire into the world and continue to live as NPCs for every subsequent playthrough, with different roles based on which class they were on Nighttime Day 7. We’ll spoil more information on this later when we discuss classes.

This post is rambling on, so we’ll cut it short on this last bit. Vindis Saga features a simulated Auction House System in the vein of FFXI’s, which buttresses the economy of the Retirement System. You’re probably asking -- why and how in the world is an MMORPG an inspiration for a single-player tactical RPG? The short answer is that we’re crazy. The long answer is that NPCs who have retired into the world generate resources based on which classes they were, which stocks up the Auction House with goods (and drives up and down prices!). Every NewGame+ is the sum of the player’s class choices. Games are about decisionmaking, after all, and decisions add up! 

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Speaking of “exciting and eccentric characters,” did you know that Twin Peaks influenced Takashi Tezuka’s Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening? That mentality seeped into Majora’s Mask, as well. Next devblog, we’ll discuss which non-game media (like Twin Peaks) serve as inspiration for Vindis Saga!

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Our current title screen! Subject to change, especially with polish. 

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The Overview

In short, our goal with Vindis Saga is to deliver a spiritual successor to Yasumi Matsuno’s seminal tactical RPGs Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together while simultaneously rectifying mid-1990s design issues that belong in a museum.

The core areas that we believe are important to carry the torch into the 2010s include: isometric viewpoint of a 3D environment with height levels, strong class-based system that encourages customization, a storyline that revolves around political intrigue and geopolitics, and finally, a Westaboo focus on European history. The Environment

Vindis Saga has roughly two dozen 3D battlefields designed ranging from outdoor maps like Gyovan Plains and indoor maps like Ranhelm Keep. The camera’s isometric and rotates 90 degree angles at a time. Flat battlefields (as in most recent PC tactics RPGs) are dreadfully boring and absolutely not befitting of a spiritual sequel to Final Fantasy Tactics, so we’ve spent a lot of programming time making sure our environments have multiple height levels that support a Jump stat, archery/crossbow range bonus, and skill tolerance levels. The Classes

Battles support up to 8v8, so the key to an interesting battle is having interesting roles for each unit to play during the fight. We have over 20 classes ranging from the Fighter to the Scout to the Necromancer, ready to be switched to and deployed depending on your needs as a tactician. Each unit has a Primary Class and a Secondary Class, which determines which active skills are available; passive and reactive skills may be used from any class so long as they are learnt. Classes are unlocked by a level-prerequisite tree, but expert players may discover that each class has an alternative hidden unlock method. Mix and match to survive! The Intrigue and Geopolitics

A good story is one that’s internally consistent, a good world is one that inspires the imagination, and a good antagonist is one whose motives you understand but so frustratingly happen to be opposite your own goals. In Vindis Saga, the two major kingdoms of Rhaim and Estia are composed of multiple duchies, who in turn are helmed by memorable and eccentric Grand Houses, the dynasties of the land. To survive your time in Vindis, you must either play each Grand House off each other or find some other way to keep your mercenary guild afloat. Do expect assassinations, deceit, and oathbreaking.

The History

Yasumi Matsuno spent three years studying International Politics at university before dropping out and eventually being hired by Quest Corporation. It’s no surprise that Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together is inspired by the Yugoslav Wars and Final Fantasy Tactics is based on the Wars of the Roses. These stories can only be germinated and organized with an existing knowledge of history and politics.

Our lead writer and programmer, Patrick, has much the same background and hopes to use that knowledge in a similar fashion. The technology level of Vindis Saga is set in the dark ages to early medieval period so that bows, crossbows, and melee weapons all have their tactical advantages on the field. Events inspired by the First Punic War (from Roman history), the Anglo-Saxon and Norman invasions of Britain, as well as even the mythological Icelandic sagas see play here. 

Catch us next time for a look at how we plan to modernize the design past this core inspiration!

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Vindis Awaits!

Hello dear friends, Today’s auspicious day marks the beginning of social media for Vindis Saga Tactics, a in-development tactical RPG for PC. Our team (Pooksoft) will share design, art, music, and more in this development log! Our first update will be an overview of Vindis Saga Tactics’ core goals, systems, and features. Soon after that we’ll share our primary inspirations for the mechanics and theme of the game. Stay tuned!