Dreamlogic Development: An Introduction

Well, we'll see if posting about this is a good idea or bad idea in the long run. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Dreamlogic is the project name I've given to an RPG I'm making in RPG Maker MV. I'm calling it that because whenever I start to make an RPG in RPG Maker MV, I get bogged down in trying to create logical lore, which causes the project to stall out. This project, therefore, is explicitly using "dream logic," which means it doesn't have to be perfect or make complete sense. It allows me to just create in the way that works best for me—pushing little bits of design forward at a time.

The general premise is that the Lord of Nightmares has been locked up by the Princes of Nightmare, because if the Lord of Nightmares dies, so do all of the Princes. And everyone except the Lord of Nightmares knows that he is imminently defeatable. So, the Princes of Nightmare have locked the Lord of Nightmares up, and are keeping him sealed away behind a door that's kept sealed by 8 crystals that are kept charged by the life forces of the Princes of Nightmare (which number 8, of course).

The player's goal is to therefore defeat all 8 Princes of Nightmare, then defeat the Lord of Nightmares.

The Princes themselves have set up residence in 8 different dreamers' dreams. These dreams function as different worlds that the player must explore in order to defeat all 8 Princes, etc. In each world is the dreamer whose dream was invaded. This dreamer can be recruited into the player's party.

Also, each world works on its own set of mechanics. This gives me a good excuse to do different things and explore what I can do with RPG Maker MV.

There are some general mechanics, though. For example:

  • Equipment has general philosophies it follows.
    • Armor provides defense in the same way, regardless of the world.
    • Rings provide a skill with a cooldown.
    • Pendants are a bit of a wildcard, and should probably be renamed, now that I think about it. Like, I'm putting things such as Shields into this category, which clearly defies the logic of what this slot should be!
    • Accessories are personalized items for each character, so they have...fewer rules.
    • Weapons are a lot more free to do different things in each world. More on this later.
  • There is a key item called the Stone of Slumber that returns you to the main hub area.
  • You can unlock skill tomes in the various worlds that can be purchased in the main hub area to teach any character the skill the tome teaches. Think of these kind of like TMs from Pokemon.
  • If you die, rather than a game over, you return to the last Resurrection Point you stepped in. I do not like death sending the player to the load screen, and prefer to save progress. Therefore, I'm going to do what I prefer in this game.
However, there are definitely a lot of differences, with more to determine as I figure out what each world is going to be.

The most well defined worlds at the moment are:
  • Rexeon, which is modeled heavily off of Ocarina of Time. As such, there will be a lot of mechanics from that game. However, there are a ton of differences, too, as there would have to be for it to even make sense.
  • Whatever I call "Not-Lordran," which will obviously take heavy inspiration from Dark Souls. Right now, I'm working on developing a plugin that will allow me to mimic Dark Souls's weapon Reinforcement and Modify systems. It is going pretty well—I have Reinforcement working, and Modification is well underway. I still need to figure out how I'm going to display some necessary information (how many Notanite shards does it take to reinforce this thing?), but it is coming along quite nicely. Also, I have weapons from this place calculating damage differently from weapons from other places, which I like.
  • Mangapolis, a city built on RNGs (random number generators). By which I mean you can't buy any items outright. Instead, you buy gachapons and booster packs of stuff. At least, that is the plan. This would get super duper annoying if this were the entire game, but it isn't, so hopefully it'll be OK.
I do have general ideas for all 8 worlds, but those three are the most mechanically defined at the moment. I also want to have interesting cross-world compatibilities. For example, the Lens of Truth equivalent revealing fake walls in the Not-Lordran world. Imagine taking the Lens of Truth into Dark Souls and being able to see right through all of those illusory walls! That's an example of the sort of thing I want to do.

Anyway, this is probably long enough of an introductory post, so I'm going to close here. I do want to begin making development updates as I create this project, so I guess keep an eye out for those. I don't have a sense of how often I want such posts to be. Probably mostly when I've got something I want to talk about. I may even include screen shots at some point!

Until next time, take care!

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