Explaining the panorama (Concepts) (1st Update/Change)

Whoops, changing stuff already?

Sorry about that (though to me it was kind of expected when we're talking about just gathering ideas for a game that I just developed a small/basic programming test for it)

We're going back and I'll explain each concept of the project one by one, section by section

I'll give the explanation as if I was explaining it to some clients or casual players, after this blog I'll explain the same things but in terms of functionality for any interested programmer who wants to know how I'm planning to program any of this

Blog sections

Type of game

Game concepts

Grids
Unit/Character(s)

ID
Name
Stats

Dash stats

Speed
Dash

Boost
Length

Ring Multiplier
Cooldown

Duel stats

Type
Sign
Active abilities
Main Passive abilities
Secondary Passive abilities
Tags

Rings and Red Rings

END OF THEORY

Latest progress!

Card arts
Modelling reference drawing

Gameplay

This game will be divided in two sections, a tile endless runner game style section (named Dash) and a RPG battle game style section (named Duel)

The base of the gameplay is: "You chase the enemy or get to where they are, and then battle them"

During Dash sections, you'll run through obstacles and collect rings, rings that will fill up a meter called "Dash", you can activate it once it's full, this will start consuming the Dash gauge, multiply your speed and you'll be invulnerable to anything as long as said meter is not fully drained; you can switch between characters while running, just remember they have a cooldown to be able to switch with

During Duel sections, you choose what ability (or abilities) you'll use to win the battle in a turn-based duel, depending on what level you're in, the set of turns might be limited, if it is and you surpass the turn limit without defeating the enemy, the enemy will get away and you'll be forced to chase it again

Game concepts

Grids

The player will have the ability to build a team with various characters, a team will be divided in 2 groups that will be called "Grids"

There's the Main Grid and the Secondary Grid; the player will place in the Main Grid the characters they want to play with, and in the Secondary Grid, the player will place characters with useful abilities for the team

Characters in the Secondary Grid won't be playable in-game, they're literally just to support the team but not to be used by the player

Unit/Character(s)

Most important of all, what's the the difference between a unit and a character?, a character is someone or something, I don't think I have to explain what a character is really; a unit, however, is a group of characters, when I use the word "group", a group of 1 member/element counts too

This game is based around cards, each card in the game is a group of units, and as explained earlier, one single unit for a card counts as a group

Each unit in the game will have the following:

An unique identifier number for the unit, it'll count from 1 and it'll go up per each unit released, this won't affect in any shape or form the gameplay

Name

The name of the unit or character, depending on the unit structure (using one character from that card, or multiple characters at the same time, or switching multiple characters within the same card)

Stats

These are parameter numbers that defines "raw effectiveness" of a unit, it'll be easier to understand by taking a look at what stats will be in the game, there will be stats for each gameplay style

Dash stats:

Speed
It's the base speed of the unit that will run through the level
Dash
Just as in the official game "Sonic Dash", there will be a Dash meter that will be filled up with rings collected in the level (to know more about this, I suggest you to watch some gameplays of that game), this Dash stat actually refers to 2 different stats:

Boost
The speed multiplier, the higher this value is, the higher the unit will run when Dash is activated
Length
The dash time length, the higher this value is, the longer the unit will keep running with Dash activated

Ring Multiplier
Some units will be able to get more rings than usual per each collected, the increase value depends on this stat, by default this value is "1", which means 1 ring equals 1 ring
You may find units with a higher value, "2" would mean that you'd get 2 rings for each ring you get
There will be low increases as "1.2", any decimal value will only be applied when collecting a "multi-ring", a multi-ring is a ring with a ring value higher than 1, usually at 10, 30 or 50 rings for that single ring, that means collecting a single ring will still give you one ring, but when collecting a multi-ring of 10 (for example), you'd get 12 rings instead
Cooldown
As explained before, during in Dash sections you'll be able to exchange between cards in realtime while still running through the stage, though you won't be able to spam those exchanges as much as you'd like, to be able to exchange with a card, said card has to first fill it's cooldown time meter

Duel stats:

HP
Health Points, if a unit recieves enough damage to reach 0HP, it'll be down for the fight, in urge to be brought back
ATK
Attack, the higher this number is, the stronger will get the offensive abilities
DEF
Defense, the higher this number is, the less damage will recieve
CRI
Critical, this is a percentage value, as it's a chance for the unit to deal damage with a "critical" multiplier (there will be a sub-number under this stat, CM, Critical Multiplier, by default it's 2 but it can be differ and increase), it's limit is 100, which means guaranteed critical hit for every attack
EVA
Evasion, this is a percentage value, as it's a chance for the unit to evade attacks from the enemy, this value can go over 100 because some attacks (from enemies and also some units) will have an "Evasion Ignorance" percentage, it decreases the target's EVA as soon it connects, then the target's EVA will restore as it was previously
ATT
Attention, the higher this number is, the higher chance the enemy will attack this unit; when the enemy is about to choose it's target, it'll be chosen randomly but with a certain tendency depending on the ATT of each member of the main party
For example, Sonic has 14 ATT, Tail 8 ATT and Knuckles 50 ATT; in this case, Knuckles would be targetted the most, Sonic at moderate times and Tails would be attacked rarely

Type(s)

This is mostly relevant in Dash sections, initially there will be 3 types (there's a possibility more types will be added as time goes on if the game's finished), and each unit will have one type, multiple, or none attached to them

The types will be:

Speed
They can get through loop-the-loop sections
Fly
They can get through long holes/pits
Power
They can get through destructible obstacles

As mentioned already, units can have one, multiple or none of these types, if a unit has no type whatsoever, then be careful when using it in Dash sections, as there will be a high chance you'll end up not being able to get through a type specific section and end up losing the game

Sign

This is only relevant in Duel Sections, mostly when attacking and recieving attacks
Signs will be the hand signs from the "Rock, paper, scissors" game, tho 2 other signs will be added if the game continues on (won't be explained now)
As you can guess by now, your attacks will get stronger if your target has a hand losing sign against your attacking unit, the damage you recieve from that same target will be lowered; attacks from the same hand sign won't have any modifier and the damage you deal when your unit has a losing hand sign will be lowered, meaning you'll deal less than damage, and so on

Active abilities

These are abilities the unit will be able to use during Duel sections, as default, almost all units will have "Attack" and "Defend", which should be energy free
In Dash sections, you collect rings, those rings help you filling the Dash meter, that was already explained; however, they also work as a energy source for abilities that have a ring cost active abilities
Active abilities with cost can't only be priced with rings, they can have other types of prices or even requirements/conditions, but by default they'll cost regular rings
The other prices and conditions will be explained within the unit iself when analazing their abilities

Main Passive abilities

Besides deciding what characters to use, the 2 grids have an important role when it comes to passive abilities

The effects of the Main Passive abilities are ONLY activated if the unit is placed in the Main Grid, effects can be extremely flexible

Secondary Passive abilities

The effects of the Secondary Passibe abilities, as you can guess, are ONLY activated if the unit is placed in the Secondary Grid, effects can be extremely flexible

Tags

These are only to "describe" a unit with key words, for example, Sonic could have tags like:
- Hedgehog

- Hero

- High Speed

Tails could have:

- Fox

- Hero

- Genius

Knuckles could have:

- Echidna

- Hero

- Guardian

- Great Strength
Shadow could have:
- Hedgehog
- Anti-hero
- High Speed

Why are tags for?, the functionality they have is not quite to describe units, but rather to be a part of a group, a group of units that share tags; the purpose of this is to specify on what units will be applied certain abilities that have certain restrictions, for example:

Let's say in your Main Grid you placed Sonic, Tails and Shadow, and you use an active with the following description

Increase ATK and DEF for "High Speed" tag allies in the Main Grid

In that team, only Sonic and Shadow would have their ATK and DEF increased, Tails won't have any effect applied to him by that ability

Rings and red rings

Rings and red rings have 2 purposes, they're used for currency but are also the main energy source for the units you're using

Let us dive in deeper: Rings and red rings are USUALLY collected in Dash sections, each regular ring you collect will fill up the Dash gauge (explained earlier at Gameplay) and as long as you have at least 1 ring you'll be able to resist hits from obstacles, but if you do then you'll lose a certain amount of rings

If you hit an obstacle with no rings it's Game Over, which is where red rings come in. Repeating, red rings are usually collected in Dash sections, tho they're VERY rare, if you lose in Dash section, you can use one red ring to continue playing; this is also applied in Duel sections, if all of your party members are defeated, you can use a red ring to revive all of them and fill their health back to 100%.

We've mentioned about active abilities and how they'll cost regular rings by default, and how they can be priced with something else rather than rings, and we're referring to Red rings, active abilities with red rings cost are more powerful than regular ring cost active abilities, depending on their prices

In this game, your characters may or may not be able to transform (each card will indicate if they're able or not), to transform they'll have a requierement of a certain regular ring count threshold, and after transforming they may consume or not the rings gradually in both Dash and Duel sections, and also consume drastically a certain amount as soon as they transform, it'll vary between units and it'll all be specified in their card details

That's the explanation of rings as a energy source, but we still haven't touched about how they can be used as currency.

When I mention "currency", I mean it's only for in-game, not that you can exchange in IRL money or viceversa, you get rings through playing and in-game they stay.

When you start any level/stage, you'll start with 0 rings but all red rings you currently have

For every ring you collect, it'll start to increase it's count from 0; if you win the game then all rings that are left will be added to your total rings counts; if you lose then you won't get any rings, the total amount of rings will be the same as when you started the level/stage.

For every red ring you collect, it'll start to increase it's count from the total amount of red rings you have, and all the red rings you collect will be saved to your total count so it won't matter if you win or lose and quit.

There will be some units that you'll be able to buy, or maybe other useful stuff. With red rings you'll be able to buy stuff more useful than you could with regular rings, maybe even super powerful units, so make sure to not lose and collect as many red rings as possible.

Official
Play through stages that revive levels and moments from official Sonic games
Original
See parts of the story of the game that were untold in the story mode
Fan
Play through stages based on fan projects, as fan animations or fan games
Challenge
Stages that made pretty difficult for you to bring the best you can

Units
Browse through all the cards you've collected so far and build your teams (by setting cards in the Main Grid and Secondary Grid)
Shop
Browse through the shop, take a glance to all the stuff the store has for you, and buy the things you're interested in getting, costs can vary with rings, red rings and probably more in a far future
Chao garden (it's just an idea, not something I'm really planning too deeply to add, if this project turns out successful and I have plenty of time, this will be added and I'll explain deeper it's functionality)
Zoo (it's just an idea, not something I'm really planning too deeply to add, if this project turns out successful and I have plenty of time, this will be added and I'll explain deeper it's functionality)

END OF THEORY

We finally reached the point where is less me explaining the idea and more showing the progress itself, and I'll start that with the next section: Latest progress

Latest progress!

So, all the progress I've shown before?, IT'S ALMOST ALL SCRAPPED!!!

I kept improving during these days and, the things I've made weren't as good as I could do now, it just wasn't good enough for my own current standards and I also needed to organize myself better, the only things I'm not totally scrapping are the minions I've shown

That means the ladybug badnik (Motobug) and the bee badnik (Buzz bomber or buzzer) models won't change, however I might do other animations for them

I made new card arts and a new modelling reference drawing: