ZIN: Action RPG Project

Sounds cool dude. I'm getting vibes of various post-apocalypse stories, and there are elements of Evangelion in there which I like. There's also a little detail that reminded me of Wind Waker, weirdly, where you talk about the saviours abandoning the people in their hour of need. Great to hear you're following through, and wish you all the best.

Turn based RPG sounds like a great fit. If I could give you some advice to ignore - and this is entirely based on personal preference - it'd be taking care to show and not tell when it comes to the plot. If that's your own headcanon for the universe rather than the exact plot, then that's great; but if you're aiming to communicate all that directly, it might be a bit byzantine. There's nothing wrong with that if that's what you're shooting for, but I think it's a cool enough idea that it could survive without being over-explained, and maybe find a wider audience.

It may be counter-intuitive, but I'd look less to other anime inspired TRPGs like Valykria Chronicles (or say, Zone of the Enders, which has some thematic similarities) and more to something like Bloodborne in how you convey the story. It'll be more effective and cheaper if you can avoid interstitial cutscenes, and instead build the universe out through incidental details - i.e. characters, items and locations - rather than having characters explain the plot to each other.

Well, let me share something my game designer told me the other day regarding how video games and story plot function: "Video games are usually an open book"

He gave a great example. FF7 was a very transparent game regarding the story. You knew who the enemies were, you knew the mission/conflict, you knew a lot of the plot devices as you played through the game. There really weren't that many secrets from the beginning to the end.

With that said, while it's great to leave somethings to the player's imagination, you don't want to leave things in the dark in an interactive medium like video games. That isn't to say that I'm giving out direct spoilers to the plot, I'm just giving you guys a deep understanding in case you find the basic premise interesting. I want you to expect certain elements about the game once you sit down and play it because, let's face it, the story is a minor part of the fun factor in video games. At this point, it's the gameplay I'm generally focused on making interesting for ppl. I don't want the game to be just a cookie cutter, jrpg wannabe. I'm gunning for it to be the best rpg available in market. it's a rather ambitious goal, but if I didn't have that in mind for my baby 5+ years in the making, then I would've quit a long time ago due to various issues in the process of getting it developed.


Edit:

As a writer, my biggest challenge is to compress and convert the story into a format suitable for a video game. My instincts keep telling me to conceal information to players and only reveal certain things as they progress, but as I've been told and heard from other sources, that can actually be counter productive. Video games are a unique form of media that can't be compared to more classic forms such as books, comics, movies, etc. Before my game designer came into the picture, I was looking at writing for video games in the same sense as writing for a book. Which wasn't good. While I'm redesigning my approach, I'm doing extra homework by reading books specifically catered to writing for video games.

Since I stopped by, I might as well give you guys an update.

I'm not sure if I said this already, but the script for the demo is done. But I'm adding another feature for the demo which will be a mini visual novel. The VN feature will be about Rio Blade the MC, but the plot will be based on a scenario in which Rio is born a citizen as opposed to a dead battery. The female lead in the visual novel will be Aliyah Shae, there will also be three other females for the sake of plot and eroge material.

Why?:

1) I want to give players a general idea of what life is like for citizens and how they behave. (The main game focuses on a dead battery POV).

2) I couldn't find a clean way to add eroge elements into the demo's main plot, doing a mini VN brings home the point that this is an adult rpg.

3) After finishing the demo script, there wasn't much else for me to do aside from learning how to program and writing up the other gaming elements (battle system, Event choreography, Quests, etc).

4) Who doesn't want more features?

Here's a few art pieces for ZIN that was created last year. Two of the concept art was done by someone who goes by FoxieMoose, another by the name of Annarumi. Both great artists. I did the coloring on the last video representing artwork for the MC Rio Blade.

//FoxieMoose





//Annarumi (art) + FinalBossXD (Color Illustration)

Well all I can say is keep at it. Developing skills in anything take time and dedication. If you have a passion for it, your work will bare fruit.

Update:

I managed to create a Mesh of the MC, Rio Blade in Blender and have it fully functional in Unreal Engine. I'm really excited for what's to come and I really enjoy learning C++ scripting in Unreal Engine.

Just finished this concept cover of Tora Nice, the main heroine of ZIN. She won't be playable in the demo, but she does make an appearance.

Update:


Company Website is deployed and open to the public. Check us out at Project FinalBoss Corp.. Still gotta work on a few bugs, but for the most part it's browsable, lol.

I'm getting started on working on the Game engine for ZIN. I made a working Level up system that I showed off at a Udemy forum. I'm just scratching the surface in C++ programming. I managed to finish a a 10 hour C++ tutorial video which further solidified my knowledge of the language.

Since the demo script is pretty much done as well as some of the concept art, I decided to get started on making 2D animations for the demo's cutscenes. I plan on using Cartoon Animator 4 to rig and animate the characters. I might also use it for the battle animations in the game, but I'll have to see how the main cutscenes will go.